


While You Were Vanishing

by warriorpoet



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Grief/Mourning, PTSD, Past Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-29 06:44:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 32,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/pseuds/warriorpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Felina, Skyler tracks Jesse Pinkman down to ask for his help in writing a book about the real story behind Heisenberg.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the inspiration for this came from [a ficlet](http://brbakinkmeme.livejournal.com/521.html?thread=161801) I wrote anonymously on the [Breaking Bad Kink Meme](http://brbakinkmeme.livejournal.com), where Skyler and Jesse run into each other at some point in the future. Thank you to the anonymous prompter and everyone who left feedback for making me think about the idea even more!

Skyler's first impression is that Alaska looks nothing like New Mexico.

And that, she supposes, is probably the point. She knows better than anyone how tough it is to make a new start in the same place. Better to go somewhere, anywhere, where there are no reminders of home.

As the plane descends into Anchorage, she sees sharp-peaked mountains that make the Sandias almost look like gentle hills. She rents a car and drives down the Kenai Peninsula, the roads bracketed by green as far as she can see. There are glimpses of the ocean outside the window, and when she stops for a restroom and coffee she can smell salt water and pine needles and wood smoke, and the air tastes clean and crisp.

She knows she's seeing it with an outsider's eyes, and she knows that going somewhere new will rarely make you a new person, and somewhere that looks promising can change drastically if you spend enough time there. But even so, this place seems filled with quiet life.

She tells herself not to get her hopes up.

She checks the address written on a sheet of notebook paper on the passenger seat beside her, and checks the GPS again. The driveway is empty, so she pulls in and parks. There's no sign of anyone home in the small wooden house, but she pulls her coat around her and thumps up the porch stairs to knock on the door.

Silence.

She sits down on the steps, and waits.

\--

The chill air is starting to seep into her bones and make her muscles ache when a dark blue pickup truck pulls into the driveway. 

It hesitates near the road for a second, and Skyler holds her breath, hoping he doesn't drive away and disappear for good this time, hoping he isn't scared off.

Gravel crunches under the tires as the truck pulls in behind her rented SUV.

She cranes her neck to try to catch sight of the driver, but there's glare on the windshield and all she can see is the vague outline of a human shape.

It's a few long, agonizing moments before the driver's door opens and he steps out, slowly. 

His hair is grown out, shaggy and down around his jaw, his face covered with a thick beard. His slight frame hasn't changed, and he's wearing a red plaid jacket that's at least two sizes too big for him. He locks the truck and shoves his hands in his pockets, approaches the house warily.

The scars on his face, down his check, the bridge of his nose, around his eye. Those are new. Probably not new, but it's the first Skyler has ever seen of them, and they only serve to make him look even less like the old APD mugshot that nobody had cared enough to show on the news in years.

"How'd you find me?" he asks.

"It wasn't easy," she says.

"Yeah. That's kind of the point."

She stands up from the porch stairs on numb legs and raises her hands, defensive. "I'm here alone. Nobody is looking for you."

He takes a deep, shuddering breath and moves past her to the door.

Skyler mentally crosses her fingers. "I'd like to ask for your help with something. Can I come in and talk to you?"

"Well, you came all this way, right?" he shrugs, noncommittal, avoiding her eyes. "Kind of a dick move to tell you to leave."

She smiles, hesitant but relieved. "Thank you, Jesse... oh. Is it okay if I call you Jesse? Or is Michael easier – "

He shrugs again and holds the door open. "Jesse's fine."

\--

Jesse offers her something to drink, and he moves stiffly around the small kitchen making coffee for them both.

Skyler watches him closely, studies him, until he glances over his shoulder and catches her staring, and she drops her eyes to her hands.

"This is a nice house," she says, just to say something.

"Yeah. Thanks. My, uh... my parents sold my place in Albuquerque and got the money to me, so... y'know, it was some good starting money. It was kind of surprising they even gave a shit I was still alive, but... I guess people are full of surprises when you least expect 'em."

"Don't I know it," Skyler murmurs.

"Yeah. I guess you would." He sets a steaming mug of coffee in front of her.

She sips the coffee slowly and he sits across from her, fingers drumming on his own mug, anxious blue eyes demanding an explanation.

"I'm writing a book," she says.

"A book?"

"About... about everything that happened. I've done as much research as I could using whatever DEA files I could get access to, but... there's still so much that's unanswered. That can't be answered. Except... by you. You're the only person alive who can even begin to fill in some of the blanks. So I've come to ask for your help."

"Jesus. Mrs. White, I – "

"Please, call me Skyler."

"I – right. Of course. Sorry, I – I didn't think – " he shakes his head, like he's berating himself.

"It's okay. What were you saying?"

He stares down into his coffee cup. "I haven't talked about any of it. To anyone. I mean, I talked..." he trails off and takes a shaky breath. "I don't know how much you know, but I talked to the DEA, to... to your brother-in-law. After he found out it was, y'know, it was... who he was."

"I know about that," Skyler says. "My sister told me. She told me that you were staying with them and working with Hank, and he recorded a confession, but... it's gone. Someone broke into their house not long after Hank disappeared, after Walt disappeared, and the tape and Hank's notes and some of his files were taken."

Jesse looks up, his eyes wide, his face pale, like he might suddenly be sick. "Was she... your sister, she wasn't... she wasn't hurt, when..."

"No. No, she wasn't home when it happened."

He lets out a breath. "Thank God. Okay. That's good."

"So you know who did it?"

He nods, and scrubs a hand over his face, his gaze drifting to the window. He's silent for a long moment, then continues as though being sidetracked into the topic of Hank and Marie never happened. "I haven't talked about any of it since I left Albuquerque. I'm not sure how much I remember. I don't know if I'd be any help."

"If you're worried that I'm going to go to the police, or that I'll make it known that I found you, you don't have to be. Nobody is looking for you anymore. I only went looking because I was hoping to find out if you were still alive. It's complete dumb luck that I ended up actually finding you."

"No, no, I don't care about that, I just – I just don't – I can't – "

"Jesse, I understand how difficult this is to talk about. Believe me, I understand."

"I don't know that you would," he says quietly, his voice cold and empty.

"But I do," she says. "And what I don't understand, I want to. Honestly, I don't even know if I'll have the guts to publish this book. I just need to go through the process of doing it. Finding everything out. It's the only way I've been able to begin to deal with everything. By trying to understand it."

He looks up at her with narrow eyes. "So, what, as long as you feel better about it, who gives a shit what happens to me?" He barks a harsh, bitter laugh. "Yeah, I've done that one already. I'm not gonna do it again."

The chair scrapes against the hardwood floor with such force that it almost tips over, and his boots pound their way to the back door.

It slams behind him.

Skyler sits back in her chair, her hands shaking. This was a stupid idea. The whole thing was stupid. However he did it, the kid got away from Walt. She should have let him have that and let him be.

She expects to hear his car start up any second, but the sound of the engine never comes. Seconds stretch to minutes and she sips the coffee that's going cold. 

Pushing the curtains on the back window aside, she peeks out and sees him lying on his back in the grass, smoking a cigarette.

Relieved, she gingerly steps out onto the back porch. "Jesse, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you – "

"When's your flight home?" he asks flatly.

Her heart sinks. She's disappointed, but knows she deserves it. "I only bought a one-way ticket."

His head rolls to the side, and he looks at her with a sceptical frown. "Kind of assuming a lot, isn't it?"

"I was optimistic." She shrugs, self deprecating, humbled. "I was hoping I would need to stay a couple of weeks, to really get in to everything. I didn't want to set anything because I didn't want to rush it. But... if I was wrong... then I'm sorry – "

"Stay here tonight at least. It's getting late, and it's a long drive to Anchorage." He stands up slowly and brushes dirt and grass off his clothes. "And I'm sorry... about that. I didn't mean to freak out like that, it's just..."

"It's okay."

He rocks back on his heels. "I have an extra bedroom."

"Thank you. I appreciate that."

She smiles, tries to convey concern, sympathy, gratitude, but he won't look at her.

"I can make soup or something," he says to his shoes.

"That would be great."

He nods, stubs the cigarette out in a birdbath littered with ashes and old butts, and walks back into the house, determined.

\--

They eat in silence. Jesse has apparently lost his old need to maintain awkward dinner conversation, and Skyler is afraid to push him to talk about anything. 

He insists on carrying her luggage in from the car. She notices him wince as he lifts the suitcase out of the back, and as he carries it up the stairs. He shows her to the guest bedroom, gives her clean towels and an extra blanket.

Skyler thanks him, and says goodnight, and turns to open her suitcase.

"He ruined my life," says the quiet voice behind her. She turns back to him in surprise and he goes on, his voice low and breaking, his eyes finally meeting hers. "He wanted me dead, and then he sent me off to something worse than that. Then he saved my life. For what it was worth. He saved it. And I... it's, like, what, almost three years now? And... I still don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do with that."

"I keep telling my son that it's okay to hate him and miss him at the same time," she says.

"I don't know if I miss him as much as I..." His brow furrows and he trails off. "How are your kids doing, anyway?"

"On his eighteenth birthday, my son was given almost nine million dollars in a trust fund from some old colleagues of Walt's. They said it was because our children were blameless victims of their father, and they felt so badly for them. But I know it's not from them. I don't know how he did it, but I know it's Walt's money. I think my son knows too, and I let him believe the story we were given because he needs it so much. We all do." Skyler smiles tightly. "I feel like shit about that every day. The other thing he did on his eighteenth birthday was legally change his name."

"It's gotta be a lot to deal with, for a kid that young."

"It's a lot to deal with for all of us," she sighs. "Anyway. My daughter, on the other hand, has no memory of her father, and I'm sure time will tell whether that's an advantage or not."

Jesse chews on his lip, looking away. "I'm sorry. About... everything."

She places a gentle hand on his shoulder and he tenses at the touch. "Even if you don't talk to me, you should talk to somebody."

"Have you?"

"No. And I'm a great example of what not to do. So you should listen to me."

Skyler squeezes his shoulder and feels the muscles loosen under her hand. His lips twitch into a faint smile, weak and doleful, his gaze fixed on the floor.

"Yeah. Well. Get some sleep. Let me know if you need anything, okay?"

"Thank you again, Jesse."

With one last sad almost-smile, he closes the door behind him. 

Skyler sits on the bed. She wipes her eyes, but the tears won't stop falling.

He reminds her of Flynn, or the way Flynn was the last time she saw him, at least. Pissed off and damaged, anchorless and struggling to keep his heart in the right place. She hadn't expected that, but supposes it makes sense.

\--

In the early morning, Skyler wakes from a fitful sleep and showers and dresses as quietly as she can. She re-packs her bag and goes to the living room, floorboards creaking beneath her feet despite her best efforts at silence.

The scent of marijuana hits her before she sees Jesse curled up on the couch, staring vacantly out the window with a joint in his hand. His head swivels toward the sound of her approach, and he jumps as though he'd forgotten she was even in the house. He snuffs the joint out and stashes it, waving the lingering smoke away with his hand.

"Hey. G'morning," he says with forced enthusiasm. "You sleep okay?"

"Fine," she lies. "Thanks."

"So, uh, you want some breakfast?"

He doesn't wait for an answer before he's rattling around the kitchen, making too much noise with pots and pans.

"Thank you."

Skyler watches him wrenching cupboards open and slamming them shut, banging bowls down on the counter, pushing the lever on the toaster down with a heavy fist. He glances up at her as he cradles a carton of eggs against his chest. He groans.

"I know that look, okay?" he says. "It's just for personal use. I'm not dealing, I'm not using anything harder. I don't even buy it, I grow it myself. So you don't have to worry that I'm gonna trap any more good, decent family men into the drug trade."

"That wasn't what I was worried about."

A headache sits tightly behind her eyes, the lack of sleep already draining her. She sinks into a chair. 

"I don't blame you for anything that happened, Jesse. I didn't come here to accuse you of anything."

Eggs sizzle in the frying pan. The toast pops up and there's the scrape of a knife.

"I know," he says. "Sorry... I... I'm being, like, defensive, or... I don't know. It's just..." he glances at her over his shoulder. "You being here is so fucking weird. It's messing with my head."

"Yeah. Mine too. Maybe I should've called first."

"Maybe."

"Would you have talked to me on the phone?"

Jesse thinks about it. "Probably not. I would've thought your phone was tapped or something. I might've packed up and left town. So... maybe it is better that you came here. It's easier to believe you're not dicking me around since you went to so much trouble to get here."

That's a relief for her to hear. He might be edgy, he might be angry, he might not want to talk right now, but there's a chance he could trust her. Someday. Maybe.

He sets a plate in front of her, eggs and toast, and a cup of coffee.

"Can I ask you just one thing?" 

"Okay..." his answer is hesitant, but sits across from her and waits patiently for the question.

"Were you there when he died?"

Silverware scrapes against ceramic as he pushes his food around the plate.

"No. Not right when it happened."

"You didn't...?"

"No." He looks her squarely in the eyes. "I didn't kill him."

She nods. "I didn't think so, but... I just needed to know."

"Would it have changed anything if I had?"

"No. It wouldn't."

He tears a small corner of toast off and drowns it in egg yolk. "What you said, last night, about how it's okay to hate him and miss him at the same time?"

"What about it?"

"Do you? Hate him and miss him?"

Skyler takes a long sip of coffee, relishing the warmth. "Every single day," she answers.

Jesse chews slowly, turning to look out the window, his expression blank and unreadable. The moment stalls, and Skyler gets the feeling that this is as far as it can go.

"So, I should get on the road soon. I might make it back to Anchorage in time to get on a flight this afternoon, or at least early tomorrow morning. I can leave my number, if you change your mind. And I promise you, my phone isn't tapped – "

"You should stay," he says.

"What?"

"Stay," he repeats. "Like I said, I don't know how much I really remember, but... if it's gonna help you, I'll try."

Skyler doesn't know what to do. She wants to leap across the table and hug him, but doubts he'd react favourably to that. She settles for a shaky smile. "Thank you, Jesse. And please, if at any time it gets to be too difficult, or... or just too weird to have me here, just tell me... tell me to fuck off, and I will."

"Alright. Deal."

He extends his hand across the table, and they shake on it.

It's a start.


	2. Chapter 2

Skyler unpacks her suitcase and calls Marie to check in on Holly and tell her she'll be away a while more, but doesn't know for how long.

"So, you found him?" Marie asks.

"Yeah. I found him."

"And?"

"And... he's like the rest of us. He's trying to keep on going, but having some trouble."

"He isn't using drugs, is he?"

"No. I don't think so." The pot doesn't seem worth mentioning. Going by how jumpy he is, it might be more help than harm.

"Good. That's good. What has he told you so far?"

"Marie, he only agreed to talk to me half an hour ago. We haven't had a chance to really talk about anything yet."

"Well, you call me as soon as you know anything that I need to know."

"Even if – "

"Even if you think I don't want to hear it. No secrets. Remember?"

"No secrets," Skyler agrees.

\--

The tape recorder sits on the table between them, blinking a patient red light.

Jesse eyes it hesitantly. "Do you really need that?"

"It's just for my own reference. I don't want to get anything wrong."

"Yeah, but... this feels a little too much like an interrogation."

Skyler remembers Hank in the diner, pushing her to talk, sliding the recorder across the table, right in her face. The way her heart roared in her ears and she had to fight to keep thinking straight. She gets it.

The recorder blinks off and she sets it aside. "Do you mind if I make notes?"

"No. That's... that's okay."

"Okay." She smiles, and flips open a notebook, uncaps a pen. "How about we start wherever you feel most comfortable."

"You sure I can't get you some more coffee or something? Water?"

"No. I'm fine, thanks."

"You drink white wine, right? I can go out and get you some, if you want. Or... or anything else." His fingers twist themselves into knots on the table in front of him.

She smiles again, gentle, not forcing it. "Jesse, we don't have to do this now if you're not ready."

He leans back in his chair. "Nah. Nah, I'm good. So, um..."

"Start wherever is easiest for you."

"Okay, I, uh..." he clears his throat and leans forward, elbows on the table, eyes fixed on somewhere Skyler can't see. "He, um... he blackmailed me, at the start. He was on a ridealong with the DEA, with... with Schrader – Agent Schrader – and, um... he saw me. My partner got busted, and I wasn't there and he saw me get away. He came looking for me after." Jesse's eyes shutter closed. "He wanted to go into business with me, cooking... cooking crystal. Meth. He said he'd turn me in if I didn't agree to it. And... and so we did."

"Okay. Good." 

Jesse nods, and takes a deep breath. "It, um... it gets pretty bad, even right from the start, so... I don't know, should I...?"

Skyler looks up from her notes. "Really, whatever you feel comfortable with. It all helps."

"Alright, so, he gave me some money, like his whole life savings—your whole life savings, I guess—and I bought this RV, and we drove out to this Indian reservation west of town. Like, way out in the desert. To'hajiilee. It's where he ended up burying his money. And... and where... where, um..."

"Where Hank and Steve Gomez were killed?" she fills in quietly.

"Yeah. Yeah. And... and, anyway, uh... two people died the second time we cooked." He says it as one long breathless rush.

Skyler doesn't react, just tries to meet his eyes, but he won't look at her. He stares out the kitchen window, pine needles brushing against the glass.

"Well," he amends. "One died then. One died a few days later. He, uh... he was... was chained—chained up in my basement and... and then he did it. He killed him."

"Walt did it?"

"Yeah," Jesse swallows heavily, his eyes squeezing shut again. "Walt did it." He has trouble saying the name, like it's a word in another language, a word his lips and tongue have forgotten how to form, or perhaps never even knew at all. Skyler realises it's the first time he's said his name since she got here.

She sets her pen down, tears pricking at her eyes. She knows Walt was a murderer many times over, has known it a long time now, but hearing it that bluntly, hearing when it happened, how soon it began... it's still difficult. "Okay," she says, trying to keep encouraging while a voice in her head begs her to tell Jesse to stop, begs her to pack up and go home, give up, forget trying to sort out rumour and fact. Change her name. Move across the country. Pretend it never happened.

That urge is one she fights with constantly.

"Look, I, uh... I don't think I can keep going right now..." Jesse's voice cracks, one trembling hand lifts up from the table to claw at his face. His fingers absently trace the scar on his nose, over and over. He's visibly shaken.

"That's okay. That's enough for now. You did really well."

He crosses his arms, hugging himself, staring vacantly down at the wood grain of the table.

Skyler closes the notebook. "So, maybe you were right about needing a drink," she says, and Jesse laughs mirthlessly.

\--

"I'd give you a tour, but I dunno how much there is to see."

Skyler sits in the passenger seat of Jesse's pickup as he drives through the small downtown. 

"There's the ocean, obviously," he gestures out the window. "I guess that's a point of interest. You know, to anyone from the ABQ."

"It's nice here," she says, feeling more at ease out in the daylight and the open road than she had in Jesse's kitchen. Jesse also seems to perk up, showing her his new life. "Do you like it?"

"Yeah. It's... it's different, I guess? And that's what I needed. Small, too. Relaxed. People tend to know everybody's business, but nobody really gives a shit. And, uh... I don't think blue meth ever made it up here, so... I never really thought there was any reason for anyone to have heard the story or really remember enough to recognise me. So there's that."

"Do you have a job?"

"Yeah. I work for this fishing charter company, helping out on the boats and stuff. I'm thinking maybe someday I'll get my own boat. The season's just ending now, so it really only gives me something to do for half the year, but it's enough for me to get by."

"Wow. Do you know anything about fishing?"

He half smiles and glances over at her. "Nope. Well, I didn't. But I'm learning."

"What do you do for the rest of the year?"

"I, uh... I do woodworking. I make little boxes and trinkets and shit for tourists. Like, little wooden bears and picture frames and stuff? I make furniture sometimes too. The place I work for sells 'em to people who come out here for fishing vacations. Some other places buy it off me." He tugs on his seatbelt and shrugs. "I find ways to keep busy."

"That's good. That's really good." It calms her to know that Walt didn't completely ruin this kid's life. He's not undamaged, not by a long shot, but it warms her, makes her feel that something good could still possibly come of everything. That maybe there was hope for all of them.

He pulls into the parking lot of a liquor store. "People kind of know me here, so... don't forget to call me Michael, okay?"

"Of course."

Jesse rattles his keys for a moment, hesitating before opening the car door, like he's revving himself up for something. 

"Okay," he says, under his breath, barely audible, and then he's out of the truck, door slamming behind him.

Skyler hurries to catch up, and follows in to the store a few steps behind him. 

An older, white-haired man behind the counter looks up from his book and breaks into a smile when he catches sight of Jesse. "Hey Mikey, how goes it?"

"Pretty good, Bill. How are you?"

"Ah, can't complain."

"Good to hear, man, good to hear."

Jesse seems comfortable in a way Skyler has never seen him. The straight set of his shoulders, the ease and quickness of his smile... it's impossible to tell there's anything askew underneath it. She can see how he's been able to build a life here, by shedding the boy who was Jesse Pinkman like a snake skin abandoned in the desert.

"And who is this lovely lady?" Bill asks.

"Oh," Skyler says, shocked out of her own thoughts. "I'm, ah..."

Jesse slings an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close. "This lovely lady is my Mom."

"No kiddin'!" he turns a bright smile on her. Skyler turns to Jesse with a surprised laugh. Jesse's thumb taps pleadingly on her upper arm.

"Um, yes, that I am!" she quickly says. "Hello. I'm Skyler. Nice to meet you."

"Pleasure to meet you too. I have to tell you, you raised a good boy here, ma'am. Hell, you must've been just a baby when you had him!"

Skyler forces another cheerful laugh. "He certainly was a surprise!"

Jesse claps a hand on her shoulder and heads off into the aisles. She gives Bill a tiny wave goodbye and follows after him. 

He picks up a bottle of chardonnay and hands it to her with a wry smirk, mouthing the word 'Sorry'. 

All she can do is shake her head and smile.

\--

Back in the truck, he starts laughing.

"I'm glad you enjoyed that," she says.

"Sorry, I'm sorry. Just... your face was totally priceless."

Skyler shakes her head again, and looks out the window, the sun hitting the water and flashing through the trees.

"You're a good liar," she says.

"Yeah. Well. I learned from the best."

"You know, I think I said that once before, too."

His jaw tightens, and he glances over at her, their eyes meeting in some kind of recognition of who they were, who they will always be, members of a secret club whose existence needs to be hidden from the rest of the world. Waltaholics Anonymous.

Jesse turns his eyes back to the road. He reaches for her, and squeezes her hand.

\--

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

Jesse unearths the joint from where he stashed it that morning.

"No. Go ahead."

"Thanks. It... helps."

She sets her glass of wine down on the coffee table. He lights up and almost disappears into the cushions of the over-stuffed couch.

"So... wherever you'd like to pick up."

"How about you tell me something first? As, y'know, a trade."

Skyler puts her pen down. "Okay. Like what?"

"How much do you know already?"

"Well, I laundered his money, so I know how much what he was doing was worth. I know that – I know he was involved with Gus Fring, and that he killed him. He told me once that he robbed a train, but I have no idea if that was actually true." _I know you tried to burn our house down_ , she almost says, but now, sitting across from him in his home like this, the memory of what she said to Walt that night makes her feel every bit as awful as the things Walt did. It's better to just forget it. She takes a breath, and continues, "I know that where he died, where the police found him, was a meth lab run by some kind of... white supremacist militia. I don't know what he had to do with them, exactly. I know... I know that your fingerprints were found there, too. But I don't know why."

He exhales, smoke rising above his head. "I was paying for what I'd done. I paid so much I built up credits."

"What happened?"

"No, I – I can't... not that. Maybe someday, but... not yet."

Skyler nods, and picks up the notebook and pen again, prepared for whatever it is he does want to talk about.

"I guess I might as well put this out there now, and give you a chance to leave before we get too far into this." He watches her closely, like what he's about to say is some kind of test he's not sure she'll pass.

She waits.

"I've murdered three people, but I don't even know how many deaths I feel responsible for."

"More than that? Or less?"

"More. Way, way more."

"Do you feel remorse?"

"Yeah. God, yeah. For most of them. Some days it's all I can feel."

He draws his knees up to his chest, curls up a little smaller and takes another toke. As an afterthought, he holds out the joint to her.

"You want a hit?" he asks.

Skyler hesitates but then lets the impulse overtake her. She figures she's going to need it. Inhaling deeply, her throat burns comfortably as she holds in the smoke and passes it back to him.

"Wow. I guess you've changed."

She exhales and coughs a little. "I guess so."

\--

Jesse tends to ramble and get sidetracked, but Skyler hangs on every word, following whatever path he goes down. He talks about cooking with Walt in an RV out in the desert, the endless hours spent together with Walt veering between patient teacher and irritated employer. 

"I probably was kind of an asshole back then, never listening to him ever," Jesse admits with a laugh, and he seems almost nostalgic.

He tells her about one time they went out to cook for four days straight but got stranded when the RV battery died. How they were dehydrated and close to death, how Walt was repenting. He tells her about the problems they had with distribution, being beaten and kidnapped by one man they tried to work with, the man that Hank shot, the man that explained Walt's fugue state. Then he tells her about how they went out on their own and one of Jesse's friends was arrested, another killed. He wanders off into a dark corner, talking about a day he spent in a meth den trying to recover stolen drugs and money. Something about a neglected little boy, something about seeing a woman crush a man's skull under an ATM. He tells her how they got involved with Gus Fring, how all their distribution problems were solved when they could sell to him in bulk. He's silent for a long while after that, and Skyler thinks that's going to be it for now, when he says, "I, uh... I don't really remember a lot of what went on then. Like, the actual business negotiation part. I wasn't too involved with that. I had some... some personal issues at that time."

There's a crack in his voice, he sounds raw and spent. He's been talking for hours, and for the first time his eyes glass over, tears slipping out.

"Shit, sorry," he mutters, sniffling, wiping his eyes.

"No, no, it's okay. We can stop now." Skyler is overwhelmed, with gratitude, with sorrow, with a desire to talk to Walt one last time and ask him why, ask for his side of the story, ask him what he got out of it, what it was about it, exactly, that made him feel alive. Her heart is heavy and her head is light, and maybe it's just the pot and the wine, but she feels sentimental for a time before everything had gone completely wrong, a time that maybe somehow she could travel back to and tell her former self to put a stop to it before it was too late.

Jesse clears his throat. "You remember the plane crash? Wayfarer 515?"

"Yeah. Of course. Our house was right in the debris field."

"The guy, the air traffic controller guy, they said it happened because he was so upset about his daughter dying?"

"I remember."

"She, uh... she was my girlfriend. She was in recovery, but being around me so much, she got back into using, and... she OD'd, and... I thought it just happened, you know, like it was just an accident, but later on, way later, he – he told me that he was there when it happened, and he – he could've stopped it, he could've helped her and... he just... he did nothing. He just watched her die."

He covers his face with trembling hands and Skyler is finding it difficult to breathe.

Hoping she's misunderstood, she asks, "You mean... Walt did that?"

He nods, quickly and violently, a strangled noise in his throat that might be a "Yes."

She thinks back, remembers the crash, the day she packed up and went to Hank and Marie's and told Walt to leave. She remembers the news, when it came out about the air traffic controller and his daughter, she remembers figuring out the timeline of when the girl had died, how it was not long after Holly was born, and how heartbreaking that was, holding her daughter and seeing pictures of the dead girl all over the television.

Their daughter was a just a few weeks old and Walt was out letting someone else's daughter die in front of him.

"Oh my God," Skyler murmurs.

"And the moment he picked to tell me that was when... when... "

Jesse lashes out suddenly, his fists striking the couch cushion, again and again, his face twisted and teeth bared, screaming sobs ripping from his throat.

"Jesse. Jesse. It's okay. You don't have to talk anymore, it's okay."

She gingerly approaches him, not wanting to scare him out of wherever he's disappeared to inside his head, not wanting him to think she's somebody else and turn his rage on her.

"Jesse, look at me," she says.

He does, his eyes red and watery and empty. He blinks a few times, and then he sees her, actually sees her standing in front of him, and takes a deep breath.

"Skyler, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Shit..."

"You're safe now. Okay? You're safe. It's over. Nobody can hurt you now."

She sits beside him and takes his hand, sandwiches it between her own, trying to keep him present. He crumples, curling in to himself. She touches his back gently, but he flinches as if she's struck him. 

He keeps mumbling apologies like they're prayers, whether to her or to someone else, Skyler doesn't know. Suddenly he sinks against her body, clinging to her, and she puts her arm around him. He lets her, this time, and cries silently against her shoulder.

"Do you want to tell me about her? What she was like?" she asks when he's calmer.

"She was... she was smart, and beautiful, and an artist. She just made some bad choices and didn't get a chance to grow up enough to stop making them. I loved her. I know I loved her, but now it's like sometimes I don't know if I loved her, or if I built her into something in my head that I fell in love with." He wipes his eyes. "She's been gone now so much longer than I ever knew her for."

"What was her name?" Skyler asks.

"Jane. Jane Margolis."

"You took her last name." It was his name, Jesse's new name. Michael Margolis.

"Yeah. Maybe it was a bad idea, 'cause it makes it harder to forget her."

Skyler knows that feeling. Using her maiden name after Walt disappeared, then feeling like that had been pointless when he was found dead with a New Hampshire driver's license that said Henry Lambert. Marie had been absolutely livid about that. Skyler had too, though less vocally, and even though she was no longer Skyler White, she was still doomed to think of Walt every time she gave her name.

She rubs Jesse's arm and has to resist the urge to kiss the top of his head, to brush his hair back out of his face.

"You wouldn't be able to forget her anyway," she says.

"I guess."

"Does Michael come from somebody?"

"Yeah. Mike. He was this guy who worked with us, and... he was a good guy. I mean, probably not a good guy by normal legal standards, but... he was a good guy. And, uh... Mike got killed by him too. He never, like, actually said he did it, but... he did it."

Skyler feels sick, bile burning at the back of her throat. Jesse pulls away from her, suddenly sheepish, his eyes downcast. 

"I didn't mean to cry all over you," he says, forcing a laugh, gesturing helplessly to the wet marks on her shirt.

Skyler gives in to the urge and presses her lips lightly against his forehead, smoothing his hair back. He flinches slightly, a reflex, but doesn't pull away.

"Thank you for trusting me with this," she says.

Jesse nods and wipes his nose on his sleeve. He jumps up from the couch too quickly, with too much forced energy, and almost stumbles into the coffee table.

"Christ, I need a cigarette," he says, and heads for the back door.


	3. Chapter 3

Skyler squints at her notepad, trying to read her own rapidly jotted handwriting.

It's incomprehensible chicken scratch that might have been the English language at some point, but got muddled somewhere between her ears, her brain, and her hand, distorted by intoxication and the cramps in her fingers.

She sighs, gives up, and starts to type from what she can remember Jesse saying, trying to pour her gut reactions out enough to let her sleep.

It's past two in the morning and it hasn't worked so far.

There's a soft knock on the door, and Jesse's voice on the other side. "Skyler? You awake?"

"Yeah," she calls back.

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah."

The door cracks open and he peeks his head in. His eyes are red and swollen and rimmed with dark circles, his skin pale. 

"Hey," he croaks. "Everything okay? Can I get you anything?"

"No, but... are you okay?"

"Yeah, just bad dreams. I got up and saw the light still on in here, so... I kind of had to remind myself I wasn't alone."

She surprises herself by asking "Do you want to sleep in here?"

He is, after all, thirty years old, and in spite of their little game at the liquor store that afternoon, she is not his mother.

So it's equally surprising when he climbs on to the bed beside her, mumbling, "Thanks," and looking mildly embarrassed.

He curls on his side on top of the covers and asks, "How's the writing going?"

"I'm not sure yet. It's in a lot of little pieces that I don't know how to fit together."

"Like life, I guess."

She smiles down at him, but his head is pillowed on his arms, his eyes closed, and he doesn't see it.

"Yeah," she agrees softly. "A lot like life."

"Would you be able to just talk to me? Hearing someone else talking helps. It gets me out of my head or whatever." 

"What should I talk about?" 

"Tell me something good about him. How did you meet?"

She's getting used to Jesse's nameless "him" in reference to Walt, so doesn't need to ask who he means. "Well, it was when I was in college. I had a summer job at a restaurant near Los Alamos. He was working at the lab there. He'd come in a lot, and he was always just a nice, polite, decent customer. Working in a restaurant like that, people tend to be jerks more often than not, so when you get a regular who is exceptional just by having manners, you tend to be relieved to see them every time they come in. Anyway, I'd always sneak in a crossword puzzle to work on when it wasn't busy, and after a couple of weeks Walt noticed, and started doing it too. He'd ask me questions about the answers I had, and from there we started talking."

Jesse scoffs. "Shit, he's even a nerd when he's hitting on chicks."

The present tense hangs there. Skyler doesn't acknowledge it. She sees Jesse's brow furrow for a second, but he says nothing.

"I was always way better at them than him," Skyler jokes helplessly, trying to break the moment.

"Did that make him act like a giant dick?"

"No. He admired it. Admired _me_. There was... respect."

"I get why that would've made you like him." His eyes open and he gives her a wan smile. "Anyway, sorry, don't let me keep you from writing. I'll go – "

"No, stay there." Skyler closes her laptop and puts it back with her things. She rests her palm on top of the suitcase, scratching the rough weave of the fabric with her fingernails. "I think I'm done for tonight anyway." She lays down beside Jesse, on top of the covers as well. "Do you want the light left on?"

"Yeah. If that's okay – I mean, I can go back to my room, seriously, I think I'm okay now..."

"No," she says. "Stay. It... might help me sleep too."

Jesse nods, and settles again. 

She closes her eyes and tries to stop her racing thoughts.

"Skyler. Do you want to see something?" Jesse asks quietly.

She opens her eyes. She should probably ask what, exactly, it is that she'll be seeing. But she simply nods.

He rolls to the side and tugs the waistband of his sweatpants down. She's about to stop him when he lifts the bottom of his t-shirt up and she can see a mark on his hip in the low light. She sits up and looks closer, and the mark becomes a swastika, crudely carved in scar tissue. 

She inhales sharply, her hand over her mouth.

"That's what my prints were doing in that lab. And the underground cell they kept me in." He rights his clothes and lies back down, flat on his back. "That's why it's gonna take me a while to talk about it."

"Jesse. I have money. I can help you see a doctor, a plastic surgeon... they can do something. You shouldn't have to live with that kind of a reminder on you."

He shakes his head. "It's like the name thing, though. There's just some shit I can't forget. It just... is what it is. I changed my name and now I try to do things differently and try not to think about what I've done, or anything that happened to me. But... it's me, you know? It's always there. So, like, if I ever get laid then I try never to show my back, or I keep my shirt on, and I don't look behind me in the shower, and I try not to think about it. But talking to you about this... I don't know, it's like I've realised that it shouldn't be ignored. Like... it's real. It happened. I can't just have this corner of my brain that I don't go near." He closes his eyes. "Shit, I think I smoked too much weed. And I still had nightmares."

Skyler lies down again, and touches his arm. This time, he doesn't react. "Let me help you. If you want help, let me help you. The money Walt gave us... I think you're entitled to it as much as any of us are."

"I don't know," he murmurs. "But... thanks."

"Try to sleep," she says, keeping her hand on his arm.

He drifts off, eventually, and she lays there wide awake, watching him breathe. She tries to piece together the things he's said, about Walt wanting him dead and sending him off to something worse. The scars. His anger, his fear. The way Walt defended Jesse to her when she told him he needed to deal with it. That Walt had apparently ended up saving Jesse's life before he died. 

She wonders if whatever the white supremacists did to Jesse was punishment, one handed down at Walt's behest. Because something happened and he turned on Walt, threatened the family, even as Walt insisted he wasn't a threat. Because he worked with Hank and told him everything. What if giving Jesse to those men had been a compromise? Walt's way of getting Jesse out of the way without outright killing him? What if she was the one who had motivated whatever deal Walt made?

She shifts closer to him and hopes he doesn't wake. He murmurs, but stays asleep. She wants to own up to it, to accept whatever blame and guilt she deserves, on top of what's already there. But what good would it do?

Hours pass, and pink-tinted sunlight starts to seep through the curtains. Finally, Skyler sleeps.

\--

He's gone when she wakes up, close to noon. 

There's a note on the pillow beside her, that he's out back in his workshop, to come see him when she's up.

There's also a missed call from Marie on her cell, and a voicemail that assures her, "Everything's fine here, Holly is great. I just... was hoping to check in, see how things are going with you. Call me whenever you get a minute."

She switches the phone off and goes to take a shower.

\--

He's sculpting something with a chisel and mallet, carefully and slowly chipping off curls of wood, focused and steady.

She waits until he pauses to blow the wood shavings away, before she says, "Hey."

He looks over his shoulder and smiles. "Hey yourself."

"What are you making?"

"Thought I'd try my hand at a moose head. You know, like the hunting trophies? Except this won't be a creepy-ass stuffed dead thing." He tilts his head and scrutinises it. "This is only my third try at it, so it's not really good yet."

Skyler steps forward to look closer. "I see it now. It looks good to me."

"Thanks." Jesse smiles again, looking infinitely more settled than he had the night before. Whether he's putting it on for her benefit, Skyler isn't sure.

"We don't have to keep going today. Maybe it would be good to take a break," she says.

"If you want to... if you need it. But I'm okay to keep going. It's actually good to get some of this shit out." He sets down his tools. "Hey, I could tell you about the time he killed a couple scumbags who deserved it and likely saved my ass at the same time. Sound fun?"

Skyler smiles weakly. "That sounds... almost impossible to resist."

He keeps working while he talks, like he's trying not to focus too much on what he's saying. He talks about working in Fring's lab, how he hadn't been a part of it at first, that Walt had someone else working with him. Until Hank tracked down their RV, Walt got them out of it, and Jesse took a beating for it. He tells her about finding out the dealers who killed his friend had used an eleven-year-old boy to do it, the brother of a girl he had started seeing, and that the dealers worked for Fring too. And then the boy turned up dead.

Jesse sets down his tools. "I was ready to waste them. I didn't care what was going to happen to me. I mean, it was two against one, right, so I wasn't gonna come out of it in one piece, probably. So, I've got the gun in my hand, and I'm ready to just start blowing them away and then out of nowhere his piece of shit car comes flying up onto the sidewalk, and just – bam – he takes them both out. One of them is still alive, and he takes the dude's gun and just... shoots him right in the head. I don't know how he knew where I was or what I was doing, or how he got there at just that right second. It was like... I don't know. He just always had this magic of the devil, or something." He picks up the chisel again, turning it over and over in his hands.

"I think I remember that. Seeing the car afterwards, at least... he told me he hit a deer. Our son was supposed to take his driving test, and Walt showed up at the house with the windshield shattered and the hood caved in, and he said... he said he hit a deer." 

She remembers that Walt had run out on dinner the night before and showed up the next day looking exhausted, talking about how surprised he'd been to see a deer, how often do you see that, and he didn't even see it just that he'd hit it and there was blood everywhere. He was being so graphic about it, and Flynn had pushed his cereal to the side and Skyler had been nauseated too, begged him to stop talking. He'd been scattered and evasive, that was nothing new by that point, and she'd suspected it was another lie but there were just so _many_ lies that she'd given up on trying to call them all out, it was easier, it was _safer_...

"Jesus," she breathes, and rubs her forehead.

"Yeah," Jesse says. "So, he tells me to run, and I'm just frozen, just standing there in total shock. And then he's basically dragging me back to my car and he tells me to go to Saul Goodman, but it's the middle of the fucking night, and he says he'll take care of it... that was always it, always he'd 'take care of it', you know? Like there was never anything I could do. Until he thought I'd fucked something up and he was yelling at me, then it was always shit I'd done." 

Skyler closes her eyes. Her ass has gone numb from sitting on an overturned milk crate for who knows how long. She worries that she's going to become immune to this at some point, the knowing. The same way she'd built up walls against the not-knowing, just to try to make it through. That at some point, none of this will shock her.

"Are you okay?" Jesse asks.

"No," she whispers.

"Hey, you don't need to shed a tear for those two pieces of shit. He actually did something good for once by taking them out."

"No, no, it's not that. It's not _them_. It's... it's _him_. More and more, I have no idea who he was or what mattered to him... or, more importantly, why it mattered to him."

"It's like, finding out who you really had your ass on the line for all that time, you wonder if it was worth it?"

Skyler nods.

"Should I stop?"

"No. No, if you're okay to keep going, we'll keep going." She wipes her eyes, but there are no tears there. "Can I possibly bum a cigarette from you? I left mine back in the house, so..."

"Yeah, yeah, no problem." 

He gets his pack off a nearby shelf and hesitates for a moment, his fingers clenching around the pack, the cellophane crumpling. Skyler watches him, curious, as he shakes it off and fumbles for the lighter.

"Here," he says, holding the pack out, ready with the light.

"Thank you." After a few drags she looks up and sees Jesse watching her with concern.

"Okay?"

"Okay," she answers, her voice sounding so much stronger than she feels.

Jesse nods and sits back down in front of his work, picking up the tools again, slowly chipping away.

He tells her about the fallout from Walt's vehicular intervention. 

He tells her that Fring wanted Walt dead, wanted them both dead, that he was going to replace Walt with another chemist, the one Walt had worked with when Fring brought him on at first. 

Skyler says the name before he does.

"Gale Boetticher?"

"Yeah," Jesse says quietly, his voice oddly flat.

"Did Walt kill him too?"

"No. I did."

The cigarette is burning down between her fingers, and she takes one last drag before grinding it out. The dull thunk of the mallet on the chisel is the only sound she can hear. Jesse won't look at her anymore.

"Then what happened?" she asks.

"I lost my fucking shit, is what happened," he laughs. "Gus wanted to kill him, he wanted to kill Gus. I kind of got caught in the middle of it, eventually. I wouldn't let Gus do it, I kept telling Gus not to kill him. He did the same for me, you know, it... it was the right thing to do. But... I don't know. He ended up getting there first." Jesse shrugs. "Gus threatened to kill you. You and your kids. Then he... the shit he did, to protect you guys? To get to Gus first? It was... he didn't hold back. It was... it was fucked up." He swallows heavily and strikes the chisel with too much force, the wood splitting under his hands. He curses under his breath.

She scrambles for something she hopes is happy, something to divert his attention. The girl. The sister of the boy the drug dealers killed. "What happened to Andrea?"

"She got shot in the head. Right in front of me," he says in that same flat voice. 

Skyler figures she must be looking at him with stunned horror, because he shakes his head. 

"It wasn't him. It was... them. I... tried escaping, once, and..."

"I'm so sorry," she says, and knows those words lost all meaning a long time ago.

"She had a kid, the sweetest little boy. Brock. I just... it's bad enough everything else that kid went through, and I can never stop thinking about him waking up and finding her... finding her dead on their fucking porch, just... and it's my fault, you know? I met her because I went to NA meetings trying to sell meth to addicts in recovery. Like it wasn't enough I got Jane using again, I had to prove to myself what a piece of shit I was by actually on purpose trying to get addicts to use again. Why the fuck does an innocent little kid's life deserve to be ruined for me being a complete fucking piece of shit and doing that?"

She has no answer.

He gets up and starts putting his tools away. "That's why I'm glad I'm up here. Like, alone. Away from everybody. Everyone's safe from me now. Jesse Pinkman, the walking bad luck charm. Except... I don't know, maybe you shouldn't have tracked me down. Now I'm dumping all this shit on you, and you don't want to hear it. I'm doing it again."

"I don't want to, but I need to."

"You still think that?"

"Yes. I do. It's like you said last night... it happened. I'm as much a party to it happening as you were, as Walt was. I need to know what I'm responsible for so that I don't just sleepwalk through the rest of my life trying to pretend it didn't happen."

"Yeah. I guess you're right." Jesse sighs, and looks at his half-formed moose head, the split wood cutting through its snout. "Well, little guy, I fucked you up and you're gonna have to grow up to be a bear instead." He picks up the block of wood to move it aside and glances over at Skyler. "I don't talk to sculptures a lot. Only sometimes. Just so you know that."

She laughs. "It's okay. I believe you."

He smiles. "Do you want to go do something? Just take a walk or something? It can be good for clearing your head and whatnot. And we've got a little while before it'll get dark."

Skyler stands, and her back cracks. She winces and rubs her shoulders. "Yeah. That'd be nice."

A light that has been absent for most of the afternoon flickers back to life in Jesse, and the idea suddenly seems even nicer to Skyler.  
 


	4. Chapter 4

Skyler focuses on the steady rhythm of their feet, crunching fallen leaves and softly thumping on worn grass. It's meditative, in a way, it lulls her mind empty. 

"So, where's your daughter while you're here?" Jesse asks.

"With my sister," she answers. "Back when Marie found out about Walt, she tried to take Holly away. Just... picked her up and went to walk out of the house." She thinks back, and suddenly in her mind's eye it's not Marie holding Holly and making for the door, it's Walt, and she's running after him, slamming her fists on that beat-up old truck, collapsing in the street, and that's where the police find her when they come, on her knees, stained with blood that might be hers or his but she neither knows nor cares. 

She rips the memory away, like yanking film out of a projector. "Sometimes I'm afraid that she'll decide she's not going to trust me anymore and decide to keep her. I'll come back to Albuquerque and Marie will have left the country with her." She laughs at herself, crossing her arms over her chest to stop her hands shaking. "Honestly, though, I'd kind of understand if she did it."

"She seemed nice, when I met her. Marie. Even though me and Agent Schrader didn't exactly have a great history, I still... I felt bad for what happened to him. I still do."

"She's been calling me, while I've been here. She wants to know... we don't exactly know what happened. Walt told me... he came to see me, the day before he was found. He said that whoever killed Hank had stolen Walt's money. Then he told me where Hank and Steve were buried, and to give that information to the DEA in exchange for not prosecuting me."

They walk in silence for a long moment. 

"He was telling the truth," Jesse says. "We came up with a plan, to get him to lead us to the money. It was the only evidence there was. And it worked. He was in cuffs, they read him his rights and everything. The whole time he was just looking at me like he wanted to kill me. And... and he did. That was the problem."

"We don't have to talk about it now. I'm sorry. We were supposed to be done for the day, I didn't mean to push you."

Jesse goes on like he hasn't heard her, his voice flat, matter-of-fact. "The short version is that Agent Schrader got shot by a psycho Nazi asshole piece of shit named Jack Welker. He tried to bargain, told Jack that there was all that money buried there, they could take it if they let Agent Schrader go, and they all just forgot it had all happened. Agent Gomez was already dead by then... I don't even remember how much money he said it was. But... Agent Schrader got shot anyway and they took the money." Jesse shoves his hands in his pockets and kicks at a pile of leaves. "I didn't see all of it that clearly. I was... I was hiding under a car and basically pissing my pants. There was a big, like, gunfight thing and... and... it was bad."

Skyler can't help herself, she has to keep on this. "Did Walt bring them there? How was he involved with a group of Nazis anyway?"

"They were there to kill me. Part of the plan to get him out there was me telling him I'd found his money and I was burning it, and the greedy asshole came running for it. Then we tracked him. So, he thought he was going out there just to meet me, to stop me and... do whatever. And later I found out he already had these Nazi fucks on board to take me out, so, he told them where to find me. Then when he found out I was with the DEA, I guess he tried to call it off and they came anyway. That's what they told me. But they told me that while they were beating the shit out of me, so who knows how true it was. As for how he was working with them... connections. One of those psycho fucks worked with us in, like, a non-Nazi related capacity, and I guess it just... went on from there. I heard he used them to take out a bunch of witnesses in prison, but that was after I quit working with him, so... I don't know, exactly, how that happened."

"I think they came to my house." Skyler says. "It was after that, after Hank was killed and Walt disappeared. I assume it was them, unless there was someone else with an interest in threatening me and my children that Walt was working with." An involuntary tremor rips through her body. "The one in charge, he seemed to be in charge... he was wearing a ski mask, but I... I could tell, just from his voice that he was young. No older than mid-twenties. And his eyes... for so long, I kept seeing them in my mind, out of nowhere. His eyes were just... so cold, and empty. The way he touched my shoulder, though, it was gentle, and almost... he was almost polite, but just made my skin crawl – "

"Can we not talk about this anymore?" Jesse says in a strained rush. Skyler, suddenly snapped out of the memory, looks over at him. His eyes are scrunched closed and his shoulders hunched.

"Oh, God, of course, Jesse, I didn't mean to..."

"Thanks," he mutters in that same breathless way.

They walk in silence again. Jesse is close to hyperventilating, and Skyler moves toward him and takes his arm. He starts to wrench away, and she murmurs, "It's okay, Jesse, I'm here. Just breathe."

He throws his head back and groans. "Fuck. I gotta sit down, just let me sit down."

He sinks to the ground, gripping the dirt with clawed hands, muttering to himself under his breath, nothing that Skyler can make sense of. 

She crouches in front of him and rubs his back, touches her forehead to his. "You're safe, Jesse. It's over. I'm here, I'm not going to let anyone hurt you again. It's okay."

It's a big promise, one she knows she can't make, one she made so many times to Flynn when he was still Walter Junior and woke up from a bad dream or came home from school crying when the other kids bullied him. A promise she broke over and over again.

One she's already breaking now. It's her fault. It's her fault Walt planned to kill Jesse in the first place. He hadn't wanted to, and she talked him in to it. She was drunk, and angry, and afraid, and just wanted it to end. And she talked him in to it.

Skyler cards her hand through his hair and whispers, "I'm sorry." 

"Okay," he gulps. "I'm okay."

And then before Skyler knows what's happening, his dirt-streaked hands are catching the back of her head and he presses his mouth to hers, kissing her like he's trying to inhale comfort from her, his rapid breath warm on her cheek, his beard scratching her skin pleasantly.

And then she's kissing him back, just because it's been so goddamn long and she's so goddamn lonely.

But just as quickly, he pulls away, his eyes wide and tearing up.

"Oh. Oh, my God. Oh, God. I am so, so, sorry, Skyler, I don't know what... I'm sorry, shit, I'm sorry."

Skyler shushes him. "It's fine. It's okay. Nothing's wrong."

She pulls away and sits close, but not too close. Just close enough to let him know she's still there.

He sits with his knees pulled up to his chest and his head down for a long time.

Skyler eventually takes a deep breath and touches his shoulder. "It's getting dark. We should head back."

"Yeah. Okay," he says, and unfolds himself again.

On the walk back, she tries taking his arm, and although he stiffens, he lets her do it. By the time they get back to his house, he's almost relaxed.

"Tell Marie that it happened quickly," he says as he opens his front door. "It was over in a second. Her husband didn't suffer. He got out of it pretty good, considering."

Skyler stands alone in the living room, not sure what to do next. 

Down the hall, she hears Jesse's bedroom door quietly click shut.

\--

She switches her phone back on and there's a text message from Flynn.

_plz call aunt marie back she wont leave me alone_

And another.

_srsly mom call her now r u ok??_

The voicemails from Marie are increasingly tense and frantic. 

"Skyler, I haven't heard from you so I'm starting to worry. Call me, even if there's nothing to report. Just check in."

"Me again. Call as soon as you get this."

"Skyler, I'm assuming the worst, so if I don't hear from you, I'm calling the police."

She sighs and jabs her sister's name in the contacts list with her thumb.

"Skyler? Skyler, thank God. What took you – "

" _Marie_. Relax. Jesus. I haven't had any free time."

"Well, excuse me for being concerned for your welfare while you're running around the country tracking down drug dealers and murderers."

"Don't. Just... don't. You said yourself you didn't think he seemed dangerous."

"That was a long time ago. Things change. He was cooking crystal meth for Nazis, Skyler."

"Not by choice," she says quietly.

"So he told you something?"

Skyler hesitates. "Is Holly in the room with you? I don't want you to scare her."

"What?" Marie's voice shakes. "No. No, she's in the living room watching TV, and I'm in the kitchen."

"Okay. Sit down."

"Skyler, _tell me_."

She does. She tells her everything that Jesse has told her about how they arrested Walt and how it went wrong. 

"Walt tried, Marie. He offered this man, this... Jack Welker, he offered all of his money to let Hank go. It was millions of dollars. Ten and tens of millions. I was in charge of it and I don't even know how much there was, but it was at least that much."

Marie's voice is soft and drained. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"No," Skyler concedes. "I don't know."

"So... it's Pinkman's fault? He... he led them right into it..."

"He didn't _know_." Anger flares and her free hand clenches into a fist. "God, you've practically been calling him a saint for years, telling me how noble it was for him to come forward. And now you're blaming him? Was all that bullshit before a dig at me? To try to make me feel worse about everything?"

"You have _no right_ to act like a victim, Skyler. _Especially_ right now, after what you've just told me – "

"Marie, I'm hanging up. I am not going to have this fight with you again. You asked me to tell you, and I told you. I'll call you every other day to check in on Holly and let you know how much longer I'll be away. But I'm not going to discuss any of this with you until I get back."

"Why are you defending him?" Marie asks, like she hasn't heard a thing Skyler has just said. "Do you just need another criminal to harbor? Do you miss it that much – "

Skyler ends the call, tears stinging in her eyes. She'll give Marie some time, call her back tomorrow, apologize yet again for things that can never be put right.

The screen of her phone blurs in front of her as she types out a message to her son.

_Everything is fine, sweetie. Sorry to worry you. Be well. I love you._

\--

Skyler waits in the living room for most of the night. Jesse doesn't emerge from his bedroom.

She starts to worry, thinking she should check on him, afraid of what she might find. What if he is using something more than pot? What if this afternoon upset him so much that he accidentally overdosed? Or overdosed on purpose? What if he'd gone into another violent trance and hurt himself?

She creeps down the hallway and listens at his door. There's no obvious sound.

She knocks softly. "Jesse?"

The doorknob turns in her hand and she opens the door a crack, pauses, and then opens it wide enough to see him stretched out on his bed, asleep, headphones on and his arm resting on a sketchpad.

He breathes in, breathes out, lightly snoring. She closes the door.

The couch in the living room smells like countless nights of pot smoke when she lies down on it. She expects that she'll be awake until Jesse comes out, but soon she finds herself dreaming of Walt.

Their house is on fire, their old house in Albuquerque, the one on Negra Arroyo Lane that's nothing but a vacant lot now. They're arguing about what to take with them before they leave. He backs her into a corner and she screams at him and then she's shaking him, trying to strangle him with her hands around his throat. The walls close in and the flames jump higher and suddenly he's walking out the door, getting away with it all over again, and the space where the door was shrinks to the size of a pinhole and she can't breathe and the room is shrinking – 

She wakes with a start, and sees Jesse hovering over her, withdrawing a hand from her shoulder.

"What time is it?" she asks, her heart pounding.

"'Bout four in the morning. Sorry to wake you, I just... I got kind of worried that you were out here."

"I was waiting for you." She sits up, tries to straighten herself out, and gives up. "Are you okay?"

"After having a panic attack and trying to make out with you, or just life-wise?" 

"Both. Either."

"I don't know." He sits beside her on the couch. "Hey, can I ask you something?"

"That seems only fair."

"What happened to him? Like... to his body? After he died? Is he buried somewhere in Albuquerque, or...?"

The remnants of her dream cloud her mind, make her words come out sharper than she intends."Why? You want to go back there and piss on his headstone?"

Jesse frowns, taken aback at her harshness. "No, I... no..."

She rubs her eyes. "No cemetery would take him. They were all afraid his grave would become some sort of shrine, would attract the wrong kind of people. Our house was seized in the investigation, and what happened there was bad enough. The city ended up having to demolish it. So... I had him cremated, and I kept the ashes."

"So he's just on a shelf in your house?"

Skyler looks down at her hands, scratches the place where her wedding ring used to be. "No, I, um... I keep them with me. My son didn't want them around, and even after he left for college, I was worried Marie might... do something. So, I just... kept them in the back of a closet, and I carry them with me when I leave town."

She glances up and he's staring at her with his mouth open, eyes wide.

"That's fucked up."

"I know, but – "

"You have his dead body with you right _now_?"

"His _ashes_ , yes."

"So you brought his ghost into my house?"

Skyler rolls her eyes. "Come on. That's ridiculous. Besides, for all intents and purposes, don't you live with his ghost every single day?"

Jesse sighs. "Shit, I just wanted to know for curiosity's sake. For, like, closure or something, but..." he trails off and bites his lip. "Can I see?"

She leads him back to the guest bedroom, and he stands back while she unearths the black plastic temporary container that had become a permanent one.

"That ain't right," he says.

"What?"

"I mean, there are worse ways to end up... way, _way_ worse, but... that looks like a garbage can."

Skyler holds the plastic container out to him and he screws his face up. "Do you want to keep it?"

"Fuck, no. But... let me, I don't know... let me make a box or something. A nice one." His eyes are fixed on it, the cube of black plastic in Skyler's hands. "I mean... he... in the end he got me out of there. I know he put me there, but he didn't mean for what happened to happen. And it doesn't make up for shit, but... I guess it counts for something."

His gaze flickers up to hers for a moment. Skyler swallows around the lump in her throat. "That would be really good of you. Thank you."

He looks back down at his feet. "You gotta let go, Skyler. Finish your book and then put it and..." he points to the box, "and _that_ up on some shelf and just move the fuck on. It's there, but you don't need to go look at it every day."

"How's that going for you?" she asks.

Jesse laughs. "It _was_ going pretty okay."

She turns and puts the container back in the suitcase. She rearranges her clothes around it, boxing it in between pairs of jeans and sweaters, covering it with a blouse and she sees her hands shaking before feels the tightness in her chest shattering and she starts to cry.

"Hey. Hey, I'm sorry, don't cry, I didn't mean it like that – "

"I shouldn't have come here," she whispers. His arms circle around her and she leans in to him, her legs suddenly weak.

"No, no, no. You needed to do this."

"I don't know what I'm doing," she mumbles into his shoulder. His t-shirt is soft, it smells like pine and weed and ocean-scented fabric softener.

"Yeah, but, seriously though, does anybody? And we went through some shit, you know, I think we can kind of get a pass on getting it together."

"I fucked up, Jesse. I fucked everything up so badly." 

He's run out of calming words, it seems, because he just rubs her back, touches her hair.

Skyler sniffles, takes a deep breath, and rests her chin on his shoulder so he can hear her clearly. She can't look at him and say this.

"I wanted you dead," she says quietly.

He pulls away, his eyes narrow, and for a moment she's afraid. "What?"

She pushes on. "After you tried to burn our house down. I wanted you dead. I thought we were so close to it all being over, and I was afraid of what you'd do. Walt wouldn't do it, he defended you and... I think I made him change his mind. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

Jesse sits down on the bed, covers his face with his hands. He's silent.

"Can you still trust me?" she whispers.

He lets out a long, shaky breath and looks up at her. "You want to know why I did that?"

She nods.

"He poisoned Brock. Almost killed a little kid that he didn't even know. A six-year-old. He put him in the hospital and made me think Gus did it. Just to get me back on his side, to help him out with killing Gus. I was seconds away from leaving town and I figured it out, and... I just snapped. I hardly even remember going to your house. I mean, I know I did it, but... it's all blank. I didn't... I didn't do it to hurt you, or your kids. Not... not on purpose, anyway. I just wanted to get him."

He looks away and a fresh wave of tears burns in her eyes. She puts a shaking hand to her mouth, holding in the urge to sob or to scream or to throw up. She doesn't know. It all feels the same.

"I don't think it was you, though. I think I did enough on my own to make him change his mind about wanting me dead." Jesse stands, suddenly unsure of himself, like he wants to hug her again but doesn't remember how to use his arms. "What happened to me, it's not – it's not your fault, Skyler. It doesn't change anything." He regains his movement, but crosses his arms over his chest, hugging himself. "I still trust you," he murmurs.

"Thank you," she chokes. "And... I'm sorry, I – "

He shakes his head, waves her off, changes the subject. "So, I'm gonna go out back and start working on this box for the son of a bitch, okay?"

Skyler sinks to the bed, overwhelmed with gratitude, with guilt, with the weight of the last five years crashing into her, feeling like it's broken every bone in her body. She aches. She smiles up at him through her tears, manages to huff a small laugh. "Okay."

"You come get me if you need anything."

She nods, her voice frozen in her throat, and his footsteps echo down the hallway. 

It's still dark out, dawn not quite arrived. When she goes to the window she can see him silhouetted in the light over the back porch as he comes out of the house, his too-big jacket and a wool cap pulled down around his ears. He walks out to his workshop, his movements hampered by the ghosts of old injuries, the injuries of old ghosts, but moving steadily onward. She can see his breath steaming in front of him in the cold, and then he's around the corner and gone.

She sleeps again, and this time doesn't dream of anything.


	5. Chapter 5

Skyler writes and Jesse works, and hours pass without either of them talking about Walt.

As more and more pages accumulate, she thinks that she's never going to get inside Walt's head enough to explain or justify or even understand his actions. She spent almost half her life with the man and could never comprehend this thing, this thing that was more important to him than her or their children. This thing that had ruined so many people.

She thinks back on that night in the plush hotel room, the night she wanted Jesse to die. Maybe she could understand it, if she tried hard enough. Maybe there's enough of Walt's ruthlessness in her after all, maybe he saw it in her before he even saw it in himself. Maybe she's just afraid to find out if she understands it.

She wonders what Walt would think of the book, such as it is in its current state of notes and pieces. He'd probably hate it that she's talking about their family like this, but maybe he'd see some hint of admiration in there, the way she still couldn't quite comprehend the magnitude of what he'd done. It was nothing to be proud of, but he had found a way. He'd find it again here, too.

She sits with her laptop at the kitchen table, and Jesse drifts in and out every few hours. He comes in with streaks of sawdust across his shirt, flecked in his hair. 

"I think it's gonna snow," he says around a cigarette, filling a thermos with coffee.

"I've had the TV on; I haven't heard any weather reports of snow."

"I've got old broken bones that start hurting whenever it's gonna snow. I trust them way more than I trust some dickhead with a bad haircut."

It's almost cosy. Almost. 

His freezer is well stocked with thick fillets of halibut, and she looks up recipes and cooks dinner for them when he comes in at night with cramps in his hands.

"I wouldn't have thought you'd have so many cookbooks," she says, browsing the surprisingly well-stocked bookshelf in the living room.

He shrugs, self-conscious. "I feel like I got a new appreciation for doing stuff for myself. And doing it right. Like I didn't care about... my own well-being or whatever before. But then, when you're at the mercy of people who _really_ don't give a shit if you're alive or you're comfortable or you're starving or you're cold..." he trails off and shrugs again. 

Skyler pulls a book of the shelf and leafs through the glossy pages, bright, full-page photographs of perfectly arranged meal settings. "That makes sense," she says quietly.

They eat and talk. She tells him about some of the short stories she published, what feels like a million years ago now. He tells her about seeing whales out in the bay, and shows her some of his sketches.

Snow falls lightly outside and he points to the window in triumph. "See? What'd I tell you?"

"Impressive," she says, and he smiles.

Then, after dinner, he lights a joint and tells her about going to Mexico, the cartel lab, and the second person he killed.

"It was just instinct. This guy shot Mike and I turned and fired and then he was dead and I had to drive us the fuck out of there, and I never really thought about it again. I'd just seen the whole cartel get wiped out, you know? It didn't feel important, in the whole scheme of things. And I think that's what made me feel the worst about it."

Skyler looks out the window and sees the snow melt away as soon as it hits the ground.

\--

Jesse washes the dishes and Skyler calls Marie.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," she says quietly, her forehead resting against the cool glass of the window.

"Yeah," Marie says, and it sounds like she's been crying. "Okay."

Skyler sighs. Marie isn't going to apologize to her, but it's not like she expects it. "Well, all right, I'll let you go. I just wanted to say – "

"You should come home, Sky."

"What?"

"I don't like the thought of you, out God knows where doing God knows what, trying to retrace Walt's steps like that. If Hank wasn't able to do it safely, then... I'm scared of what could happen to you. That's all."

"Marie..."

"Don't make your kids orphans. It's not worth it."

"Marie, nothing is going to happen to me. I'm safe."

"Physically, sure, maybe there's no actual physical danger. But... the obsession you have with this, it's taking you away from them."

Skyler grits her teeth. Obsession. Jesus. As though Marie could throw that word around like it never applied to her. She watches Jesse, methodically drying plates and glasses and silverware. He glances over at her, like he's trying not to look like he's been eavesdropping, but couldn't help but notice the long silence.

She hears Marie's voice in her ear. "Skyler? Are you still there?"

"I don't know what I'm doing. I just know that I need to do it," she answers. "I'll be back soon."

Jesse turns away to stack the plates back in the cupboard, and Skyler presses her forehead to the window again. 

"Okay," Marie says, her voice breaking. "Be careful."

"I will."

\--

"So, you said he disappeared after Agent Schrader got killed?"

Skyler cradles her glass of wine, tracing the stem with her thumb. "Uh-huh. Well. First he was at the house, trying to get us to leave with him. Marie had told me Hank called her, that he had Walt in cuffs. And then, there he was, a few hours later, free as can be." 

"You didn't go with him."

"No. God, no. I knew something had to have happened to Hank for him to be there, and when he all but said Hank was dead, I thought he had killed him. I wanted him gone. I, um... I picked up a knife, and threatened him. We fought, and... at one point, he pinned me on the ground, and... God, I thought that was it. Flynn, my son, he... he pulled Walt off me and called the police. I'd only told him what had been happening for the past year and a half a couple of hours earlier, and then there he was pulling his father off me before I was stabbed to death."

"Holy shit," Jesse breathes.

"Yeah," Skyler says with a sardonic chuckle.

"You really think he would've done it?"

"In that moment, I think he might have." She sips her wine slowly, focusing on the sharp taste. "Then Walt grabbed the baby and just... left. Hours later, he called, and the police were there and they were listening in. I said they weren't, but... he knew. He tried to make it seem like I hadn't been part of anything that he'd done. And there we were, playing this lie still. And it kind of scared me how good I'd gotten at it." She sighs. "Anyway. Holly was found at a firehouse with a note identifying her, and then... that was it. Walt was just gone."

"I never thought... I never thought he'd do anything like that. Ever. Like, him just standing there while a fucking Nazi's got a gun at the back of my head ready to kill me just 'cause he said so... that almost makes sense to me. As much as anything like that can make sense. But... shit, you, and your kids. I never thought... _ever_."

"From what you've said, all the times he tried to keep you out of trouble, and... the way he defended you to me, I... I think it's just as surprising that he let someone hold a gun to your head. That he told someone to do that." 

Jesse pushes his hair back with a shaking hand, apparently eager to change the subject. "So, uh... do you know what happened to him? Where he was?"

"He was in New Hampshire. Doing what, I don't exactly know. He stole a car from there that got him back to Albuquerque, and the police there searched and eventually found a cabin that he'd apparently been living in. There were clippings about the case from the Albuquerque papers all over the wall. When they found him dead, they found a New Hampshire drivers' license with a fake name and a photo that looked like he did when he disappeared. So... he did what you did, I guess. He changed his name and went into hiding."

Jesse nods. He taps the ash off his cigarette and clears his throat. "Saul had a guy who could do that. That's how I almost left town, before..."

"Did you know Saul disappeared too?"

"I know something happened. I tried to get in touch with him, after... but the phone was disconnected, and his office was gone. I don't know where he went. Or if he's alive."

Skyler smiles and sips her wine. "I found him."

His eyes go wide. "Seriously?"

"Remember Francesca?"

"Yeah."

"It cost me a lot, but eventually she sold him out. He's in Omaha selling used cars. He didn't want to talk to me, but he was more than happy to get in touch with his old contacts to help track you down."

Jesse cracks a smile. "Yeah, the last time I saw him wasn't exactly friendly. That's gotta be his idea of revenge. Asshole."

"I got the impression that he was hoping to find out if you were still alive, too. He wasn't optimistic that you were, but I gave him the excuse to try to find out."

"That's... actually kind of sweet."

"Should I give you his number?"

He snorts. "Hell, no."

"So, how did you get your new identity without Saul's guy? The one Walt would have used?"

"There are other guys. And, you know, people like that were glad to help when they found out who I was."

"You weren't afraid of being turned in?"

"Yeah, but... I had nothing to lose. I figured, worst case, I'd either end up dead or in jail. And after what happened, those both sounded like okay options."

Jesse stubs out his cigarette butt and lights up another one. He holds the pack out to her, but Skyler shakes her head. She swirls her glass, making a little whirlpool and watching it slowly come to a halt.

She takes a sip, and swallows heavily. "What... what exactly did they do to you? You don't... don't talk about it, if you can't, but..."

He exhales a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, staring up at it. 

"Sorry, that was stupid of me. Forget I said anything."

He speaks slowly. "Think of the worst things you can possibly imagine being done to you. Then make them ten times worse. Then make it go on for half a year, but you don't know if it's ever going to end, and you know that even if you try to end it yourself, they're gonna go after the one person left that you care about."

"Brock?" she asks.

"Yeah. After what they did to Andrea, I just couldn't... I had to just take it."

"I could help you find him. Saul and I. You could see him again."

He laughs a little. "Nah. I think I've fucked up his life enough."

They sit in silence again, but it's comfortable, now, not like it once was.

"So, um... you were talking to Marie before?" he asks.

"We had an argument yesterday and I was trying to apologize."

Jesse nods and gently rolls the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. "She wants you to come home?"

"She says she does," Skyler sighs. "But I don't think we're quite finished here yet, and I don't want to push you before you're ready. So, as long as I'm still welcome here, I'm not going."

"What do you still need to know?"

"What happened the night Walt died. Anything else you want to tell me."

He nods again. "You're still welcome. I like having you here. I really didn't think I was gonna, but I do."

Skyler smiles down at her glass. "Thank you. I... I like being here."

"I'll tell you about that night when I'm done making the box. That seems right."

"Okay. That sounds good."

"I'll, um... I'll try to work slower on it, maybe." A shy half-smile crosses his mouth and he gives her a hesitant glance.

"Take all the time you want," she says warmly.

And she means it. As difficult as it may be to go digging up the past, being with someone who not only knows what happened, but shares it and is willing to talk about has turned out to be a gift. 

Skyler knows she's not whole, she never will be again, but just being around Jesse somehow makes her feel less hollow.

\--

When Skyler gets up to go to the bedroom, she hesitates. She had hated worrying about Jesse for most of the night before, and thinks maybe it's just easier if he's _there_.

"Do you..." she starts, gesturing to the hallway. "Do you need to... have company tonight?"

"Um..." Jesse scratches the back of his neck. "No, I think... I think I'm good. Unless – I mean, unless you... want company?"

The entire situation is so absurd that she wants to laugh. But she holds it in, figuring it might insult Jesse, and says, "I... that would be nice. I... I had some bad dreams last night, myself, so..."

"Okay. Okay. Yeah, that... okay." Jesse suddenly crackles to life with nervous energy. "Is it okay if we use my room, though? I just don't think I can sleep with... you know, now I know his ashes are there, it's kind of..."

"Yeah, of course. That's fine."

He avoids her eyes as he passes quickly to his bedroom. She trails after him, thinking he might be hiding either drugs or porn out of politeness, curious but wanting to give him privacy. She lingers outside the doorway and catches a flash of steel going into his pocket.

Skyler tries to swallow, her heart suddenly pounding in her throat. "Is that what I think it is?"

Jesse startles, and bites his lip. "Yeah," he says, turning to her sheepishly. "I, um... I keep it in the glove compartment of my truck, usually. But the other day when I pulled up here and saw you, I brought it in with me, 'cause... I didn't know what was going to happen. And I just kept it here in case. But... I don't want to wake up from a bad dream and forget you're in here and shoot you by accident. So I'll just... I'll just go stick it back in the car."

"That's – that's considerate."

"I, uh... I guess we're kind of even now. On the possibly prepared-to-kill-each-other front, at least." 

"I guess so," she says dryly. 

He leaves, but the sight of the gun stays with her. She's shaken, thinking what might have happened if he'd panicked just a little more when he first saw her, if instead of seeing her he saw Walt in her place and pulled the trigger. 

Maybe Marie is right, Skyler thinks. Maybe she is putting herself deliberately in the path of trouble. Maybe it's some subconscious effort to reclaim the past, to try and get it right this time, to try and stay in control of it.

She sighs, kicks off her shoes and stretches out on the bed. She needs to start seeing a fucking shrink. She should've done it years ago. There's just too much clutter in her head to keep thinking straight.

When Jesse returns, she's staring blankly up at the ceiling. He lies down beside her. His hand brushes against hers. His skin is icy cold.

"I'm sorry you saw that," he says. "I didn't mean... I should've put it back already."

"I'd probably want to shoot me if I were you," she answers.

"I didn't want to... I _don't_ want to. I just... I was scared. I mean, the past showing up on my doorstep like that, you can't expect me to _not_ be cautious."

"It's okay." She turns her head on the pillow and smiles weakly. "Really. It's okay. This whole thing, it's... I'm asking a lot. I really am grateful you even let me in your house, let alone everything you've been willing to talk about."

Jesse nods and switches off the light. "I don't even know the last time I was in a bed with someone else. Like, besides the other night when we did this. It's kind of weird. Not a bad weird, just... weird."

Skyler murmurs agreement.

"Have you... has there been anyone else? Since him?"

"No," she says. 

"Not at all?" he pushes.

"I tried, a couple of times, but never got past a first date. Sometimes it feels like everyone in New Mexico treats me like a leper or a sideshow attraction. And aside from that, there's... well, trust issues would be an understatement."

"What happened to..." Jesse starts before trailing off.

"Who?"

"Nah, never mind."

"What were you going to say?"

Jesse huffs a sigh and Skyler keeps staring up at the ceiling, her eyes adjusting to the darkness.

"When I was at your house that one time for dinner and you said something about... you know. The dude you had an affair with."

It's Skyler's turn to sigh. She closes her eyes against the shadows. "That was my boss. Ted. He... his neck was broken. He's paralysed now."

"Jesus. Did he go after him or – "

"No, no. It was... an accident. And it was sort of my fault."

She tells him about cooking the books for Beneke, the IRS problems, secretly giving him Walt's money, sending Saul's A-Team after him, the accident – what she knew of it, at least.

"Saul told me that it just happened... he had signed the check and was trying to get away from them, when he fell and... I went to see him in the hospital. He was... so scared of me, and God, I felt so awful, but I needed him scared so he wouldn't go to the police. Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't start talking after it went public... or at least after Walt died. Maybe he's still afraid of me."

She falls quiet and the silence stretches on and she wonders if maybe she's put Jesse to sleep. But then he reaches out and squeezes her hand.

She keeps going. "I started sleeping with him to try to push Walt out. I slept with Ted and then immediately told Walt. When I found out he was cooking meth, I asked Walt for a divorce and he refused, he moved himself back into the house even after I changed the locks. I didn't know what else to do. Thinking back, that's all I did the whole time. I didn't know what to do, but I had to do _something_ , and then I was left trying to hold on and ride it out, long after that was even possible."

"How come you never left him?" Jesse asks quietly.

"How come _you_ never left him?" she fires back.

"I did. In the end, I did."

"But before then?"

"I tried. It never really worked out."

"Yeah. Me too." Skyler takes a deep breath, trying to articulate something she never stops thinking about but has never been able to say out loud. "I guess I underestimated him. I always thought he was in over his head, and that I had to do something, I had to be involved to try to have some control over what was happening. I had to keep us safe. Me and the kids. And him, too. I had to try. And then... then he killed Gus Fring and I knew he did it. As far as I knew, that was the first time he'd killed someone. I was too afraid of him to leave. I thought I could wait and he would die, and nobody would know, and that would be it. I don't know if that was naive or stupid or delusional optimism, but... I keep thinking back, about when the perfect moment could have been, if I had known earlier, if there was some point I could have convinced him to stop, or been brave enough to turn him in, even though that would have hurt the kids. Anything has to be better than what happened."

Jesse is quiet. Skyler can hear him breathing, starts to count his breaths, an old trick she used to use to fall asleep when Walt was still beside her. After he was diagnosed, when his breathing was labored or wheezing, she'd count every one. Back when she counted his breaths in hopes they wouldn't stop. Back before she knew anything.

Then Jesse's voice interrupts her. "He talked like that, once. He said once that he tried to figure out when the perfect moment to die would have been. When he would've had enough money and you wouldn't have known about what he'd done."

Skyler picks up her head and tries to meet his eyes, but it's too dark, she can't see him clearly. "Did he say when that was?"

"The night Jane died." He sounds far away, trapped in the bitter edge of his voice, but quickly snaps back, trying to fit that into Skyler's timeline. "So... I guess, not long after your daughter was born, and after Gus bought from us the first time. He was... when he said that, he was, like, going crazy. He hadn't slept in Christ knows how long, and I slipped him some sleeping pills, just over-the-counter shit, trying to get him to stop being so weird. He was being totally morbid, so... I don't know how much he meant it. Or maybe that means he really did mean it."

She sets her head down on the pillow again.

"Did he say anything else?"

"He – he wanted you to miss him. You and the kids. Wanted you to have good memories of him. I guess he thought he'd fucked that up by that point."

The last time she saw him alive flashes across her mind. How sick he'd looked, but how he'd finally said something honest. It wasn't a good memory, but it wasn't the worst.

"Maybe that would have been better. If he'd died then. Things might have still worked out." 

"Yeah. Maybe. We wouldn't be here though." 

Skyler laughs to herself. "Wouldn't that be a good thing?" 

"I don't know. Probably."

Jesse lets go of her hand, but shifts closer to her, and she decides that Marie is wrong. She's not in trouble here. For once she feels safe, and not alone, and she can't help but feel like a kid at a sleepover. Sharing secrets and hiding from monsters in the dark.


	6. Chapter 6

Skyler wakes slowly, and then all at once when she realizes that they've shifted in the night, curled up and twisted around each other. She inches her hips back, tries to extract an arm, carefully, but not careful enough. He groans, and she can feel the exact moment he wakes up when his breath catches and he rolls away from her.

"Shit," he mutters.

She keeps her eyes closed and hears the rustle of the sheets and his bare feet on the hardwood floor. The bathroom door closes down the hall.

She gets up and makes coffee. They don't talk about it.

\--

Her attempts at writing raise questions that she can't answer.

When she makes her way out to the workshop, she's sure to make a lot of noise so she doesn't startle him. He looks up from his work. 

"Don't look at it yet," he says.

Skyler closes her eyes. "Okay. Why not?"

"Would you let me read your book? Before it's finished?"

She considers it. "I think I would."

"You're just saying that so I'll show you."

"I'm not! I promise."

Jesse laughs to himself. "Yeah, yeah."

"Well, is it okay if I stay out here?"

"You can stay, just... don't look."

She makes a production of shielding her eyes enough so that she can't see what Jesse is doing while she drags the milk crate over to be in perfect alignment with his back, his body blocking his work. 

He looks over his shoulder and smirks. "Thank you."

There's a persistent scratching that Skyler guesses is sandpaper. She listens to the steady back-and-forth for a moment, before she says, "Are you okay to talk more today?"

"Yeah," he says. "Is there something specific you wanna know?"

"How did you keep cooking without Gus Fring's lab?"

"Exterminators. We hooked up with these shady exterminators that Saul knew, and went in to houses that were tented to get bug sprayed."

It clicks, then. The last time she saw Jesse in Albuquerque. The tank Walt hid in the carwash.

"Vamonos Pest," she says.

"Yeah. That's right, you saw the truck, when we... anyway, we got special equipment that could be set up and dismantled for each cook, and we went in and out of a different place each time. That's, uh... that's how we first got involved with... with Todd. He's... the guy you were talking about the other day. The one who came to your house."

The scratching becomes harder and faster, and she can see Jesse's back stiffen, his shoulders tense and hunched. He goes on, talking aimlessly, a slight tremor in his voice.

"It was kind of fucked up, I guess, going into people's houses and doing that. Cooking crystal in their living rooms. But we were always real careful about not damaging anything. Before us, those guys were ripping off the people whose houses they tented. Making copies of their keys and coming back to steal shit, or selling the information to other assholes who'd come in and boost the valuables. We always left everything exactly where we found it, so, you know... it wasn't really... hurting anyone. I mean, it was, but not, like... by comparison. Not to the people who lived there, anyway. They never knew."

Skyler stays quiet, not wanting to go too far or to once again say something that unintentionally pushes him over the edge.

Jesse turns around, as if to check if she's still there, still listening. "You said he told you about the train robbery?"

"He mentioned it. He didn't tell me anything. He sounded proud of it."

"He was. He went on and on about how he worked out it would've been the biggest train robbery in history, when it came to potential earnings... Shit, I was proud of it too, at first. I helped him come up with the idea of how to pull it off without anyone ever knowing it had happened. I felt like I'd actually, you know, contributed something useful for once." He turns back to his work, the scratch of sandpaper softer and slower.

"The tank that you and Walt picked up from the car wash... did that have something to do with it?"

"It was this chemical we used in our cook. Methylamine. It's really heavily regulated and shit, super hard to get. When we first started, we stole a barrel of it ourselves, and then when we were cooking for Gus, everything we needed was just there. After that, we had a source who'd get it for us, same one Gus used, but the DEA was watching and then we had to get it ourselves. So we stole it from a train."

He explains it to her, how they worked it out, adding water to keep the weight of the container the same so nobody would know it was missing. She can see something of Walt in there, the way he describes the science of it, the mathematics of it. He's less precise, less exact, but his desire to explain it to her, for her to understand the reasoning of it, and the pride that's still there in coming up with a solid solution... Walt's influence as a teacher has clearly gotten to him, is still hanging in there in spite of everything. She smiles with tears in her eyes as he describes the heist to her, and she's glad his back is turned.

When he talks about how it almost went wrong, how the train started up before they were ready, how Walt kept him under the train until it drove over him, she wipes her eyes just in time. He glances over his shoulder to check in with her.

"So it worked perfectly," she says, and her voice cracks a little.

"Almost," he says quietly, and turns away, back to his work. "You ever hear about that kid that went missing in Whitehorse? Drew Sharp? Last seen riding his dirtbike out into the desert?"

"Oh, God..."

"He, uh... he saw us. I don't know how much he saw. Never got the chance to find out. Todd... Todd shot him. Killed him. Just... like it was nothing. And, um... that was it, for me, pretty much. I wanted out after that. I couldn't do it anymore."

She's afraid to ask. A voice in her head taunts her: _You've come this far. What's one more?_

"What did Walt do?"

"He... he didn't defend him, exactly, but he... he just kind of let it slide. He helped pack up the kid's body and then... he helped get rid of it." Jesse sighs. "I said I wanted out, and he just kept going, ignoring me, like I hadn't ever said anything. There was this crew in Phoenix that Mike knew, they made a deal to take over the distribution and then Mike and me were gonna get out. Five million dollars each. All three of us could've got that from selling the methylamine to them, but he... he wouldn't take it. That's what I was doing at your house that night, trying to convince him that it was a good deal, that it was the right thing to do. It was more than he ever needed. But... he wouldn't do it. I quit, I for real quit, he wouldn't give me my share, and I just said 'Fuck it' and walked. It was all for nothing, and I didn't care."

"But Walt kept at it without you. For a while, at least."

"Yeah, I guess. He, uh... replaced me with Todd, so... and I don't know how it happened, but the cops were coming for Mike, and he was trying to leave town, but he ended up dead, and then a bunch of witnesses, Gus's guys that Mike was still paying off, they got taken out in prison... and I... I was pretty much expecting him to show up and kill me any day."

"But he gave you the money instead."

"Yeah." He turns and frowns at her. "You knew about that?"

"Not at the time, no. But I've read about you driving around town and throwing bundles of cash out your window. The APD seized close to five million from you, so I assume that was the money Walt owed you."

"Yeah. I... I figured out by then that Mike was probably dead, and that he'd killed him. And... just... when it had been for pretty much nothing, it felt pointless and so... so bad, but actually, you know... _profiting_ from it? That much? Like, the whole reason I started dealing was for the money, but... I never thought anyone was gonna get killed. That was stupid of me, I know. Who knows how many people I've sold to have OD'd or gotten fucked up and beat somebody to death for saying the wrong thing to them, or been so high they let their kid starve to death or something. But actually, you know, being there when it happens? Gale was just some harmless nerd and he sure as shit didn't deserve what I did to him, but he _chose_ to get involved with Fring. It was a risk. But that kid... he was just there. Wrong place, wrong time, and then he was dead for no reason at all, and his parents had to try to go to sleep at night not knowing what happened to their kid. Every place was becoming the wrong place. Knowing what I'd done, and seeing the shit I'd seen, I couldn't keep that fucking money. Maybe I should have. I should have just left town then. Just shut the fuck up and bailed."

Skyler wipes her eyes again and stares down at her feet, black boots tracing arcs in the sawdust. "There are a million things we each could have done differently. Who's to say anything would have been better?"

"But, it's like you were saying, though... _anything_ has to be better than what happened. For me, and for you... your whole family."

"All we can do is be responsible for our own decisions. Nothing that Walt did."

"C'mon. I know that's not how you feel."

"No. It's not. But it's good advice, in theory."

"Okay, well, my decisions alone, there's still a lot of shit I could've done to stop some of it from happening."

She steers the conversation sideways, asking a question she always asks herself, one she hopes he has a better answer for. "Do you like your life now? Are you happy?"

Jesse sets down his work and fully gives her his attention. His brow furrows, his mouth twists in a grimace. "I mean... yeah, my life now is better than what it _has been_ , but... am I happy... happier than I _was_ at some points, but am I able to actually be happy... like, _happy_ happy... no. I'm not. I'm alive, and I guess that's a good thing, but aside from that... I don't feel a lot of anything."

"Yeah," Skyler says quietly. "I know what you mean."

"I don't think there's any silver linings here. But I appreciate you trying to find them."

She stands, careful not to look at what he's building. "If I stop looking, I don't know what else there is to do."

She crosses her arms and heads back in to the house, ducking her head against the cold. She lights a cigarette and sits on the back steps, smoking until her body is numb.

\--

Skyler sits down to write and ends up reading instead.

Everything is so raw and open, like a fresh wound spilling blood all over the page. She wants to wipe it clean, stitch it up, make everything into cleanly bandaged scars, not show the damage to the outside world.

Would she let Jesse read it? She's sure she meant what she said. But the thought of anyone else reading it is suddenly and immediately terrifying. Jesse's opened up so much to her, and while she's told him things, she knows it hasn't been a fair exchange. It's not what she came here for, but she wonders if she can do it at all. If she's fine to dig up the past here, in isolation, but showing it to the rest of the world has suddenly become an insurmountable task.

It's her story, but it's Walt's story. It's always going to be Walt's story, and she's always going to be either the idiot dupe wife or the greedy, selfish bitch co-conspirator. It feels like that's all she's been for so long, the only way anyone has talked about her. What Walt's story made her. And who is she without that?

She paces circles around Jesse's living room, his kitchen. She wants to go outside and take a walk alone, but she's afraid she'll get lost.

Better to be lost inside than lost outside.

Skyler sits in front of the computer again, fingers jittering over the keys. She remembers when she first had to try living without him, when he disappeared. She was alone and her life still revolved around him. He wasn't there, but he was always _there_ , in her head, in the questions thrown at her from reporters following her through supermarket parking lots, in the answers that DEA investigators pressed her for under fluorescent lights, in the way the furniture of their family home was crammed into that small two-bedroom apartment. He was there in the blame in her son's eyes, the betrayal in her sister's. 

Now he's gone, but... he never will be. They say till death do us part, but it isn't true. She's so tangled up in him, he's so thoroughly defined what her life is now by destroying what it used to be, that she knows he'll never be truly gone until she is. 

It's a sickening idea.

She slams the lid of the laptop closed and stumbles to the back door, gulping lungfuls of cold air when she gets outside. 

She walks with her head down, just wanting to move, to go, not caring where, and almost runs right in to Jesse as she rounds the corner to his workshop.

"Whoa. Hey." His hands clutch arms, trying to steady her. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I – nothing. I'm fine."

"You're clearly not, but okay." His sympathetic smile calms Skyler somewhat. It's sympathy, not pity. "Is there anything I can do?"

"No. Thank you." 

She pulls away from him and exhales slowly. 

"Okay," he says, shoving his hands in his pockets, watching her closely. "Do you wanna go somewhere? Just get out of here and do something? Hell, I know I still get kind of nuts sometimes just being alone in this place. Sometimes it's good to just drive around and remind yourself there are people out there, you know? A whole world of 'em."

"No. I'm fine."

Jesse shrugs. "Alright. But I gotta go get some stuff anyway, and I think I might take a break for a while. I'm almost done, but I'm kinda getting cabin fever. It's good to get out as much as possible while the weather still lets you, or else then I will go seriously crazy – "

"Okay, okay, okay. You're right, I should get out. I'll go with you."

"Cool," he says, and heads for the house.

Skyler holds her hands out in front of her, her fingers pale and trembling against the bright green grass.

\--

She follows him around the grocery store in a daze, feeling like she's just watching everything she sees from somewhere far away. 

Jesse – Michael, out here, out in his life – says hello to people, even some she suspects he doesn't actually know. He picks up laundry powder, a six pack of Budweiser, a box of Cap'n Crunch, a bag of apples. His step is light and he smiles a lot, and Skyler wonders if she could really ever do that. Go start over somewhere else where nobody knows her, rewrite her own history and perform as somebody else every time she left the house. Fake it and fit in and make that her life.

It seems even lonelier, she thinks, than being isolated by a place where everyone knows too much about you. But at the same time, it holds so much more possibility.

"Is it lonely?" she asks him as he's steering his truck out of the parking lot. "Pretending to be someone else?"

"Not any lonelier than being Jesse Pinkman was. Michael Margolis hasn't had anyone he cares about die. So he's winning."

"But does Michael Margolis have anyone he cares about?"

Jesse laughs. "Yeah, that's the question, isn't it? Jesse Pinkman is still too afraid of people dying, so he tells Michael Margolis not to get too close to anyone, just in case." He glances over at Skyler. "You, though... you survived him. I'm not afraid of anything happening to you. Maybe you should move up here."

"What would I do here?" 

"Who says you have to do anything? You've got enough money, you don't have to have a job. You could write. Not just what you're doing now, but novels and shit. You could bring Holly with you, and just hang out. Teach her all the different kinds of bears. Build snowmen. You could be, like, my artist's model or something."

Skyler laughs. She can't stop laughing. 

"What?" Jesse says.

She's verging on hysteria, her eyes tearing up.

"Okay, so, it's stupid – "

"No, no. It's not. It sounds wonderful." She tries to catch her breath. "What on earth would we have to talk about, though? Without Walt, what do we have in common?"

"We'd talk about bears. And snowmen. What you're writing, and what I'm painting."

A sad smile tugs at Skyler's mouth. It's ridiculous, but it sounds better than what she has now. 

"Yeah, it's stupid..." Jesse laughs.

"I just have such a hard time picturing my life being anything that doesn't revolve around what Walt did. You said I need to move on, and you're right. I should. That sounds like the smart thing to do. But I don't know who I am if I do that."

"You're whoever you want to be."

"I want to be who I used to be."

"Whoever you want to be except for that."

Skyler sighs. "Uh-huh. Except for that."

Trees whip past, small wooden houses, empty lots and glimpses of the ocean. She tries to imagine living here, tries to imagine living again at all.

\--

Jesse gets back to work and Skyler leaves her laptop closed. She calls Marie and they speak in strained, clipped voices. Holly misses her, wants to know when she's coming home.

"Soon," Skyler says. "Probably a few more days."

"Stay safe," Marie says, and then she's gone.

Skyler sits on the couch and eyes the laptop warily. 

The whole point of coming here was to find out what you don't know and write this damn book, she tells herself. Now you're afraid of it?

She wrenches the computer open and stares at what she's written again.

She could reframe it. Make it less of a memoir from her point of view, more of a dry recounting of the end of Walter White's life. How he became the famed Heisenberg. The man behind the myth.

No publisher will want that, though. They want dirt, they want blood. The offers she'd been getting after the legal dust settled were all for the open wounds tell-all. 

She sighs.

She has to finish it. She knows she has to. It will always be there, taunting her if she doesn't. Too afraid to talk, too stuck on wanting to protect people who are far beyond it now. Walt getting the best of her again. 

If she finishes, he can be out of her life for good.

Then she can start over. Whatever that is.


	7. Chapter 7

"Skyler."

There's a blinding white light in front of her, and someone calling her name.

"Yo. Skyler."

That gets her attention. The blinding white light turns into a smartass punk kid in a beanie and too-big hoodie. Then she turns and he's the scarred man in front of her, knit cap and too-big jacket.

"Hey," he says, pulling the cap off, running a hand over his hair. "You in there?"

She blinks her bleary eyes, and it feels like the computer screen has been seared into her retinas.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay, I just completely zoned out."

"Writing not going well?" 

"I want it to be done," she says, which isn't an answer, but it's honest.

"Well, I got something that _is_ done," he says, and she notices that his other hand is behind his back. He produces the box and sets it in front of her.

"Oh, my god," she says. "Jesse, this is gorgeous."

And it is. She knows nothing about carpentry, but this looks like something she's only expect to stumble across in an antique store, attached to a hefty price tag. She runs her fingers across the smooth wood and raised filigree framing the lid. 

"It, uh... it has lining in it too, but I can take it out if you don't like it, or put in another color. I've got some other stuff around, or I can go get something else. Whatever you want."

She lifts the lid to reveal dark blue velvet.

"I thought maybe blue would be kind of inappropriate or something, like it was celebrating it. But... that's not the same blue as our stuff, so I don't know if it's okay."

"No, no, it's... it's fine. It's great. It's almost too nice for him." She closes the lid and just sits back and stares at it.

"Are you – are you sure? If you want something different, I can take another pass at it – "

"Do you want to come back to Albuquerque with me and help scatter his ashes?"

Jesse frowns. "No, I can't, I – why do you wanna do that?"

"I've been thinking. I need to start actually taking _action_ to move on, not just saying that's what I'm doing. The idea of writing this book, first thinking about it, and then what research I've done, it's holding me back. Maybe I'm wrong, and that knowing everything that I can is never going to help me understand it. And... anyway, I think giving him a final resting place, having some kind of closure and physically leaving him behind, I think... that could help."

"But why do you want me there?"

Skyler looks up at him, surprised that he would need to ask. "Because you were important to him. You were there for the thing that he cared about most. It wasn't for his children, it wasn't for me, he did it because it made him feel alive. He told me that, when he came to see me before he died. It was important to him, and you were a part of it."

"Yeah, that's just it. It was important to him, he did it for him, and I was just _there_. He didn't give a shit about me. And I don't give a shit about what he wants anymore. I made that for me. For my closure. For whatever reason, that I still can't fucking figure out, he didn't kill me. Trying to help you out, that's me giving thanks for that. And 'cause I feel bad for you. I saw how he treated you. I listened to him over and over, bitching about how you could never understand that he was doing all the evil shit he did for your benefit. He said the same thing to me, and it was all bullshit. I know what he was like just as well as you do, and because of that, I feel bad for you. I like you. I want to help you because you didn't deserve any of that shit."

She looks down at her hands, and they're shaking almost as much as his voice. He hasn't sounded that angry since the first day she got here, and she expects him to run again, to get away from her.

"I can't go back to Albuquerque," he says, his voice lower, rougher.

"You didn't deserve any of that shit either," she says.

"Whatever," he mutters. He grabs his stash box from under the coffee table and lights a joint, glaring at her from across the room through the smoke. "Look, go dump his ashes out in the desert or flush 'em down the fucking toilet and sell that box on eBay for all I care. Do whatever you want. He's your husband. I'm done with him."

Skyler takes the wooden box in her hands, traces the filigree with a fingertip. "Do you want me to leave now?"

"No. I don't." He sighs. "I'm sorry. This has been... really fucking hard for me, okay?"

"I know. And you can't know how much I appreciate it."

"Just don't go. What I've got left to tell you is gonna be the hardest. I'm not going this far reliving all this only to bail right before the end. Okay?"

"Of course. I'm not leaving if you don't want me to."

He looks away and takes a hit. "You want dinner?" he asks, holding in a lungful of smoke.

"Let me. It's the least I can do."

Jesse nods through a long exhale. As he passes by her, he holds the joint out.

"If you don't need it now, you're gonna need it later."

As she breathes in, she flashes back again to the smartass punk kid he used to be, the first time she showed up at his house uninvited and warned him away from selling marijuana to Walt.

_You will be one sorry individual._

She wants to go back there, knowing what she knows now, and march him out of his driveway, bundle him up in her old Wagoneer and just drive. Go. Anywhere.

Skyler's eyes drift shut as she holds in the smoke, and when she breathes out, he's gone.

\--

Jesse returns, freshly showered and dressed in so many layers it looks like he's going on an outdoor trek, even though the house is warm. 

After they eat, he roams from room to room, turning on every lamp and overhead light.

Skyler waits patiently, and when he sits across from her with a glass of water and his eyes downcast, she asks, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"No. But I'm going to."

"If you need to stop, at any time, just to take a break or to stop for good, it's fine. Just let me know."

Jesse looks up. "Yeah. I will."

Skyler straightens the notebook in front of her, but has a feeling she won't need to write anything down for this. It's likely going to stick in her head and never leave.

Jesse inhales, long and shaky. "After Agent Schrader was dead, he let them take me. They said they were gonna find out what I'd told the DEA and then kill me. And he was okay with that. He was just fucking fine with that. And so they took me. And they did the first part. That's how... that's how Marie's house got broken in to. I told them about the tape, about where to find it... I just wanted it to _stop_ , just hurry up and fucking kill me."

He takes a long, fast gulp of the water and ends up choking. He coughs into the sleeve of his sweater, clears his throat. Skyler wonders if she should get up and fix herself a drink, something a lot stronger than water.

"It was Todd who was in charge of me. Because he told the rest of 'em we had a history. Like him shooting a little kid was like some fucking good time we had once. Then after he... did what he did to get information out of me, instead of killing me he takes me into this lab. And he's got me in chains and cuffs, my hands and my feet. And he... he hooks me up to this thing in the ceiling. Like... have you ever seen those things people have in their yards so their dogs can run up and down and think they've got space to move, but still be tied up? It was like that. So I could move around enough to cook, but that was it. And he had... there was this picture of Andrea and Brock that he'd put up, and it was taken from far away while she was walking him to school or something, like he'd been stalking them and – so he said, 'Let's cook', and I did. I just kept doing it. The thing I never wanted to do again, I just had to keep doing it."

He raises the glass again, his hand shaking. 

"I'll, uh... I'll spare you the details of what went on. And spare myself having to say it, I guess. 'Cause I still, I can't... I can't... I've tried blocking a lot of it out, you know? Like even while it was happening, I was already trying to block it out. And when I dream about it, sometimes I don't even know if it's shit that actually happened. But... I mean, you've seen some of the scars, right? So there's proof of some of it. And some of it... I know. I know it happened, but maybe I'm just trying to pretend I don't."

The vacant, faraway look in his eyes scares Skyler. She can only imagine that what he's seeing in his mind is infinitely more terrifying. She reaches out and holds his hand.

"Do you want to take a break?"

"No. No. And this shit, it's not important for what you want to know. I just thought it needed context or whatever."

"I'll listen if you need to talk about it."

"I can't," he whispers.

"Okay. That's okay."

He yanks his hand away from hers and roughly scrubs at his eyes. "So, anyway," he continues, louder. "That goes on for months. After I tried getting away once and they... did what they did to Andrea, I was more well-behaved, I guess. I just took it, whatever they did to me. It got to where Todd would leave me alone to cook. I was still chained up, I couldn't go anywhere, but I was by myself. Then one night I'm cooking and he comes in and says I need to go with him into their clubhouse. Anytime that happened before, it was never anything good, but he unlocked me from the dog run and put the cuffs back on, and I went. And when I get in there... he's there. Looking like shit. Like he's about a million years old and gonna drop dead at any second. He'd told me the cancer was back and I guess that turned out to be true."

Skyler gets up and retrieves the last remaining bottle of wine from the fridge and pours herself a glass.

"Do _you_ need a break?" he asks, watching her closely.

She shakes her head and sits back down, taking a sip. "Did he say anything to you?"

"No. Jack was talking, but I don't even know what he was saying. I was just... so fucking angry at him. I blamed him for everything. The last thing he said to me when they took me was to tell me that he was there when Jane died, and I was just so fucking angry. But, like, I couldn't show it. I could never show it around them—I could never show _anything_ around them—because they'd use it against me. They didn't ever need an excuse to do what they did to me, but I didn't want to give them anything more. But... when he saw me, when he saw what they'd been using me for, he wouldn't look at me. That's all I remember, that he just wouldn't look me in the eye."

Jesse isn't looking Skyler in the eye now, his gaze fixed on his water glass, his hands gripping it, knuckles white. She expects it to shatter in a shower of jagged pieces at any second.

"Then, he jumped on me. Pushed me down on the ground. I thought for a second he was going to start beating the shit out of me, you know, like he'd finally got up the balls to kill me himself, and that was fine by me. Better he do it than Todd or Jack or any of those other psychos, I guess. But then... the whole room exploded. I know now it was a machine gun, but right then... it was just noise and the walls ripping apart and him covering me, and for some reason... I remember thinking, 'I stink so bad right now, and Mr. White has his face right in me,' and that embarrassed me. That was only a split second though, but it was so stupid, it feels like that was the only thing I was thinking."

He laughs at himself, strained and breaking, his eyes glassy with tears. Skyler almost flinches at the sound of Walt's name. Hearing it in Jesse's voice is a sudden surprise.

"It stopped. I don't know how long it went on for, it was probably only, like, seconds, but it felt like forever. Then it stopped. And he got off me. I still had no idea what had happened, but then I saw that Todd was alive. I thought if I was still gonna get killed then I had to take him out first. So I got the chains, and I just..." he trails off, and with closed fists mimes pulling tightly. "I choked him. I felt him die. It felt like it took forever, like I was fighting him forever, but there was no way I was gonna let go of him. That's the one thing I'm not sorry about. I'll never be sorry about killing him. Ever. It's the only good thing about having nightmares about him. I get to wake up and remind myself that I felt him choking, that I felt his windpipe collapsing. That I did it. That probably makes me as big a psycho as him, but I don't give a shit."

Jesse's fists unclench and drop limply into his lap. He silently gets up and paces, shaking his hands out as though they've been wrapped up in chains all over again.

"I got the keys out of Todd's pocket. And Jack was still alive, and he was gonna try and bargain by telling Mr. White where the money was. But I guess Mr. White shot Jack before he could even start saying it. I was undoing the cuffs and the gun went off, and I thought he was coming for me but he gave me the gun. Put it down and slid it across the floor to me. He, uh... he pretty much told me to shoot him, if I wanted to. I said I wouldn't unless he wanted it, and he said he did. I was holding the gun on him, and I... I saw he was bleeding. There was blood on the side of his shirt, and it was spreading pretty fast. So, I didn't do it. I couldn't. I figured he was done for anyway, and I didn't... I didn't want to kill anyone else. Even him. It wouldn't have done anything for me. I would've just been doing what he wanted, and I wasn't gonna do that anymore."

He slumps back down in the chair, wipes his eyes on his sleeve. "I told him if he wanted it that bad then he could do it himself. And I dropped the gun and walked out of there. I got in Todd's car, and I went. I just drove."

"He didn't say anything else to you?" Skyler asks.

"No. He just kind of... nodded at me. There wasn't anything to say." Jesse sniffs and wipes his eyes again. "I know that's probably not enough for you. You want, like, some profound last words and to know the exact second he died. I don't know how much longer he lasted after that. I don't even know if he did end up doing it himself. Afterwards, I tried to avoid the news as much as I could. I just knew enough to know that he was dead, and the picture of me that they kept showing looked different enough that I might be okay."

"He didn't kill himself," Skyler says quietly. "He was already gone when the police found him on the floor of the lab. There was no weapon near him. The wound in his side was the only injury. He bled out."

Jesse nods. "I'm sorry there isn't anything more... I don't know, maybe I'm not remembering it all. It happened so fast, from Todd getting me out of the lab to me driving out of there. So fast. I didn't even really process it until – shit, I still haven't."

"I understand."

Jesse might have been closer to Walt in the last couple of years of his life, just by his association with the thing that had made Walt happiest. But even so, he was just another planet orbiting Walt's sun, near and constant but unable to get close, left cold and in the dark when the light went out.

"You, uh... you said he came to see you before he died?"

"Yes, he did."

"What happened?"

"For the better part of a year, there had been nothing. Not a word. I didn't know if he was still alive. But a few days before he came back, he called my son and tried to arrange to send us money. Flynn, in his words, more or less told Walt to 'fuck off and die'."

Jesse huffs a teary laugh. 

Skyler half-smiles and continues, "After that, he called the police from a bar in New Hampshire. By the time they got there, he was gone. A car in the area was stolen, and then found at the Denny's on Central a couple of days later. Then he showed up at my door. He looked so awful... like you said. He asked for five minutes, and even after everything... I couldn't say no. I loved him, once, and I wanted to understand. I still do. I'm starting to think that's never going to happen, though." She sighs and finishes off the wine, pours another glass. "He told me where Hank and Steve were buried. He was honest with me, for once, not holding on to that bullshit excuse about doing what he did for our family anymore. He said nobody would be coming after me when he did what he was going to do, but he didn't tell me what it was. He asked to see Holly. Then, that was it. He was gone. There were police watching our apartment when it was found out he was back in town. One of them knocked on my door late that night and said he'd been found. That he was dead. I didn't feel sad or relieved or... anything. Just wrung out. Tired. I thought I'd gotten used to him not being there, he'd been gone for so long, but... that was it. The finality of it... still hasn't really sunk in."

"Yeah," he says, and gulps down what's left of his drink. He paces aimlessly around the living room.

"Are you alright?"

"No. Not really." His hands shake as he pulls his sleeves down over his fists, his breathing shallow and quick.

His eyes are scrunched closed and he gives a small, pained cry of surprise when Skyler puts her arms around him.

"It's okay," she whispers.

"I, uh... I need to not think right now." His voice is shaking, and so is his hand when it comes to rest on her hip.

"Jesse..."

She can feel him crying into her shoulder. He turns his head, kisses her neck.

"This – this isn't a good idea." Skyler's voice breaks. She knows it's true, but right now she's not sure she cares. 

She doesn't want to think either.

"Nobody else knows what this is like," he hisses. "I _need_ you."

She doesn't want to be alone anymore.

"Are you sure that you want to do this?" she asks slowly.

"I don't want to _think_ ," he says again.

He kisses her, and she kisses him back and doesn't think. It doesn't erase the past or hold back the future, but it pushes them far enough away that she feels like she can breathe, just for a moment.

When Jesse sheds his layers, sweater, shirt, t-shirt, and heads for his bedroom, she follows behind him. There are circular scars interspersed among the freckles on his shoulders, they look like old cigarette burns. There's a tattoo between his shoulder blades that might have once been a sugar skull, but is now a mess of scars. Skyler begins to catalogue his injuries but has to give up when thoughts of exactly how they got there begin to intrude too much.

She holds him, and he touches her like a life line, clutching, desperate, eager to escape. They don't speak, not with words, at least. His hands are insistent but gentle, and his eyes are red but he doesn't cry anymore. She closes her eyes and tries to just feel, to just be present, to be with someone who could _know_. It works, for a few minutes, and then it doesn't. It feels like she's watching them both from a long, long way away, and it's interesting, the way her legs hook around Jesse's hips, the way he burrows his face in her shoulder.

The process of moving forward can't be done without a few gigantic steps back, she figures.

After, he smokes a joint and she pulls her shirt back on, cold except for where the space heater is aimed towards her face. There, her skin burns.

"I... feel like I should say thanks, but that would be weird," Jesse says. He offers her the joint and Skyler shakes her head.

"Do you feel better?"

"Nope." He looks at her quickly. "Uh, I mean... nothing personal. You were..." he trails off and laughs. "I used to be kind of scared of you, but I always thought you were hot, so... I mean, it's a shame this couldn't have happened, like, five years ago or something."

"Right," she says dryly. "MILFs. I remember."

"What?" 

"Your MyShout page? I found it when I was first trying to figure out who you were. When Walt told me you sold him pot."

"Jesus," he laughs. "Remember that day when you showed up to yell at me? You almost caught me moving a body. Emilio. You know, the first guy who... I, uh... I guess I forgot to mention that before."

Skyler shuts her eyes and shakes her head. "I keep asking if you're okay, if you feel better... it's a fucking ridiculous question, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Jesse murmurs. "But what else is there to say?"

She waits until he finally falls asleep, then quietly collects the rest of her clothes and sneaks back to the guest bedroom.

The wooden box is there on the bed, waiting. She takes the plastic container from her suitcase and transfers the bag of ashes without looking at them, without considering what that grey-white grit used to be, the person inside that body and what he had done. 

The bag nestled comfortably in dark blue velvet, she closes the lid and once again runs her fingers over the planes and ridges of the wood, a compulsive habit she's sure she's going to repeat for years to come.

It's not until the wood box is in her suitcase and the plastic container discarded that she starts to cry, covering her face with the pillow, wailing with soul-draining sobs, but keeping it quiet, muffled, not wanting to scare Jesse.


	8. Chapter 8

Skyler wakes up in the guest bedroom, alone, her eyes swollen and clothes rumpled. 

She goes to Jesse's room and finds it empty. He's in the living room, staring blankly at the television. The home shopping network. She watches a steak knife cut through a shoe, then sits down beside him.

"Did you sleep any?"

"Some. Yeah." He tucks his hair behind his ears, cracks his knuckles. "Where did you go?"

"I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to disturb you."

"Listen, last night, I... I feel like I guilted you into it. And, Jesus, if there's one thing I never want to do, it's fuck somebody who doesn't want it, seriously, but I just couldn't think straight, and... I'm sorry."

"Jesse, no. You didn't coerce me or anything like that. I wanted it. I... wasn't exactly thinking clearly myself. But I don't regret it."

"No, no, me neither. And if it sounded like I didn't appreciate it after, I'm sorry. You... I know you were doing me a favor..." 

"Don't worry about it," Skyler says quickly. "It wasn't just you, believe me."

He nods, and lets it go. "So, um... I guess you'll be leaving soon?"

"If you don't feel safe being alone, I can stay a few days."

"It's not a problem. I'll be fine. I was fine before you got here, I'll be fine after you're gone."

"I'm sorry," she says, and hates herself. "I'm sorry that I made you relive everything."

"Nah. Don't blame yourself for it. I'm fucked up. Some days I handle it better than others. Something like this would've happened with or without you being here. It happens a lot."

"Maybe... maybe you should think about talking to someone once I'm gone. A professional."

Jesse shrugs, he grunts something that sounds like a noncommittal, "Maybe."

"I can help you pay for it," Skyler adds.

"Yeah, can we not talk about this?" he pleads.

Skyler gets up from the couch, trying to force cheerfulness, like nothing had ever been wrong. "Alright, so, I was thinking about maybe driving back to Anchorage this afternoon, and getting a flight in the morning."

"That soon?" He looks up at her with wide eyes.

She softens. "How about I leave tomorrow?"

Jesse nods. "Yeah. Tomorrow is good."

\--

Skyler sets up camp at the kitchen table with her laptop and notebooks. The background noise of Jesse moving around is soothing. Television channels changing, bread popping up from the toaster, water running in the bathroom, the pad of his bare feet on the floorboards. It all means that he's not still slumped on the couch, staring at the TV but not seeing a thing. He's up and moving. She hasn't completely ruined whatever Walt and Todd and Jack left unharmed.

He makes coffee for her and sits across from her at the table, clearing his throat softly. Skyler looks up.

"You, uh... you know you can't say anything about coming here in the book, right? Or ever. You can't mention that you met with me. Use whatever you want that I told you. Say you found it out after, or that he told you, or whatever. But you can't ever say you were here."

"I know. Everything you've told me is just to inform whatever I write. For background information. And just... unrelated to the book, just for me." She nods. "You're safe, Jesse. I promise."

"And your whole moving past it, leaving him behind thing... does that..." he takes a deep breath, rubs his eyes, and mumbles into his hands, "does that mean me too?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, like, aside from your kids, I'm probably the biggest reminder of him that there is. Maybe even more, since I was there for most of the evil shit he did. I can totally understand if once you leave tomorrow, you never want to hear from me again. But... I've told you things that nobody else in the world knows. And it's taken a lot out of me. And... I don't know, just this being it seems... kind of a waste."

"I'm not going to do that, Jesse. I promise. Anything you need, any time you want to talk, you can call me."

He too, knows a lot about her that nobody else does. He is the only one who could possibly understand what Walt had done to her life. That's what the night before had been about for her, more than anything. That connection, that tiny thread of hope that she wasn't alone. She doesn't want to leave Jesse behind. No matter how much she wants to move on from Walt, she knows she can't entirely erase him from her life. And now Jesse had become a part of what will always be there, what traces of Walt will remain.

But then, she supposes, Jesse had also known a lot about Walt that nobody else had. And Walt had left him behind, once. It's what he's come to expect.

Skyler reaches out and takes his hand. His eyes slip closed and he smiles weakly. 

"Alright. Yeah. Thanks," he says.

The comforting underscore of his movement around the house ceases a few hours later, and it isn't long before Skyler notices the quiet. She thinks that maybe she's zoned out again, didn't notice him going out to his workshop, or maybe back to his bedroom to take a nap. 

She looks up and sees him on the couch, studying her closely, a sketchpad across his lap.

He looks down quickly, nonchalantly tapping his pencil.

Skyler smiles. "Are you... drawing me?"

"Gotta see what it's like to have you as my artist's model before you're gone," he says with a shrug.

"That might be the most flattering thing anyone has ever done."

She catches his embarrassed smile before she turns her attention back to the screen, and tries to get back to work, tries not to be too self-conscious, tries not to think too much about the way Jesse looks at her.

She tries not to think.

\--

That night, her last night, she sleeps beside him again.

"Did you give Walt a watch for his birthday?" Skyler asks out of nowhere.

"Yeah... why?"

"I remember he showed it to me, and said that the person who gave it to him had pointed a gun at him and threatened to kill him a few weeks earlier. He didn't say it was you, but he said I'd change my mind about him, just like that person did."

"That was me," Jesse answers darkly.

"I change my mind about him every day. Multiple times a day. Sometimes it feels like I change my mind about _everything_ , all the time now. But... I've changed my mind about what I first thought about you, and it's not going to change back. Ever. I want you to know that when I say if you ever need anything, I can help, I... I mean that. It's one of the only things I'm sure of."

"I should've shot him when I had the chance," he says.

Skyler fumbles for his hand under the covers, kisses him, rests her head on his chest. "It's okay," she says. "Sleep. You're safe."

They both lie awake in silence.

\--

Jesse carries her bags out and loads them back in her rental car while she waits inside like he insists she should.

She watches from the open door, completely defeating the purpose of staying inside to keep warm, as he slams the trunk shut and trots back up the porch steps with a smile.

"All set!" he says, far too cheerful.

"Are you _sure_ you're going to be okay alone?" Skyler asks yet again.

Jesse rolls his eyes. "Jesus, I'm fine, okay? If I managed to go this long without blowing my brains out or shooting dope into my eyeballs, I'm not gonna do it now, alright?" He starts down the steps again, and glances back at her over his shoulder. "It's, uh... nice of you to worry, though," he adds.

She follows him down to the car. They stare at each other for a long beat before she pulls him into a hug.

"Thank you," she says.

"Yeah. Yeah, anytime."

She kisses his cheek and her eyes sting with tears. She laughs. "Damn it, I'm not going to cry again."

She pulls away from him and he takes a deep breath and his eyes are downcast, fixed somewhere around her shoulder. 

"So, uh... call me when you get home. Just, you know, so I know you're home safe and all."

"I will." Skyler pulls her sunglasses down from the top of her head, hides behind them as she gets behind the wheel.

Jesse stoops over, and she rolls the window down.

"The offer still stands. All this could be yours." He gestures with his arms spread wide, taking in his little house and his workshop, the green grass and the pine trees, the mountains, the ocean, the possibility of something new. He smiles wryly.

"It is tempting."

"Seriously, though. Maybe you could come back in the summer? Bring the kids. I'll take you out fishing. Maybe... I don't know, maybe Flynn would feel better talking to me? Like, someone closer to his age that he's not related to that can kind of get it?"

It flashes through Skyler's mind for a second, an image of Jesse trying to be the cool stepdad, Flynn fixing him with the withering look he'd inherited from both his parents. It's equal parts absurd and horrifying. 

"Maybe," she says with a smile.

Jesse nods and smiles like he knows she's humoring him. "Anyway. So, uh... drive safe."

Skyler reaches out through the window for his hand and squeezes gently. "I'll talk to you soon."

Jesse nods again and pulls away, taking a few steps back towards the house, shoving his hands in his pockets.

She turns the ignition and backs out of the driveway, giving him a small wave before the window rolls back up. He nods again, and she sees him kicking at a clump of grass and then she's out on the street and driving away.

\--

When she gets to a hotel by the Anchorage airport, she pops the trunk to collect her suitcase.

On top of it is a small sheet of white sketch paper, Jesse's pencil sketch of her, snuck in with her bag when she wasn't looking so they could avoid the inevitably awkward conversation about it, she supposes. He had caught her in three-quarter profile as she wrote, her hair pinned back at the base of her skull, the hard set of her mouth a contrast to the way strands of hair softly framed her face.

The idea that Jesse had somehow seen her as stronger than she had felt in years makes her tear up for the first time since she'd got on the road. 

Skyler tucks the page in her laptop bag to keep it from being crumpled. She slams the trunk and pulls her suitcase toward the hotel lobby, wiping her eyes on her coat sleeve.

\--

It's late the next afternoon when she pulls in to Marie's driveway.

Skyler sits for a moment, trying to steel herself for dealing with her sister. 

She delays the moment, and dials Jesse's number.

"Hello?"

"Hey," she says quietly. "It's Skyler."

"Hi."

"I'm back in Albuquerque. I just pulled up at Marie's."

"Good. That's good. Thanks for letting me know you got there okay."

"Thank you for the sketch," she says.

"Oh. Yeah," he laughs. "I was kind of wondering if you found that."

"It's beautiful. Thank you."

"Well... you know... good source material."

Skyler smiles. "How are you doing?"

"Um... I'm okay. Yeah, I'm okay. I've been taking long walks and shit. Getting baked. The usual. Thinking about maybe getting a dog."

"That's good. I think it would be good for you to have some company."

Jesse murmurs in agreement, and they lapse into silence. She hears him take a deep breath. 

"Skyler, go see your family. I'm fine."

"You'll call me if you need anything?"

"I promise."

"Okay." Skyler wipes her eyes, mentally curses herself for crying again. "Bye, Jesse."

"Take care," he says.

She puts her cell phone away, gets a tissue from her purse, dabs at her eyes again. She can't sit out in the driveway forever. Marie is expecting her.

When Marie opens the door, Skyler barely has a chance to say a terse hello before Holly is bursting through the door, wrapping her arms around her mother's legs.

"Mommy!"

"Hey, baby girl. Have you been good?"

"She's always good," Marie says with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Skyler picks her daughter up and kisses her cheek. "I missed you so much," she says.

"Missed you too."

"Holly, how about you go finish packing your things? Your Mom and I need to talk for a little bit, then she'll take you home."

Skyler sets her down on the ground and she's off and running down the hall.

"Don't run!" Skyler and Marie call after her simultaneously.

Once Holly is out of earshot, Skyler gives her sister a tentative smile. "Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah. Fine. You want some coffee?"

Skyler nods and trails after Marie into the kitchen. Marie still has her and Hank's house, and it always depresses Skyler to be here. Not just as a reminder of better times, but seeing her sister all alone in the big, empty house, with only her memories to keep her company. 

She always feels a little guilty whenever she takes Holly home after shes been staying with Marie, even for just a day. She knows she'll feel terrible when the time comes to leave town, but she can't let that stop her from following through.

"I'm thinking of leaving," she says as Marie pours coffee.

"Leaving what?"

"Leaving town. Permanently." She looks down at her hands, doesn't want to see Marie looking betrayed all over again. "I'm going to stay here to finish the book, and then I'm going to leave."

"Where will you go?"

"I don't know. After it's done, there's just... no reason to be here anymore." 

Marie pushes a mug of coffee across the counter, into Skyler's view.

"Do whatever you want," she says flatly.

Skyler sighs wearily. "I don't want to fight you anymore, Marie. We have so little left."

"I'm trying, Sky. I am." Marie sips her coffee slowly, and Skyler notes the dark circles under her eyes, her face pale and bare. It looks like she's hardly slept since Skyler called and relayed what Jesse had told her about how Hank had died. "So. Did you get what you need?"

"Mmm. I think so. It remains to be seen."

"Are you done with these little research trips yet? Don't get me wrong, you know how much I love having Holly here, I'd just like a heads up so I can figure out what I'm supposed to _tell_ her when you disappear like you do – "

"I'm done," Skyler says sharply. She bites her tongue and doesn't say any more than that. 

Marie studies her, and Skyler can tell she doesn't believe her. 

"What was he like? Pinkman?"

"Different. He's been through a lot."

Marie scoffs. "Yeah. Who hasn't?"

"Yeah," Skyler says quietly, and then Holly comes in, clutching her backpack, and the sisters paste on their brightest smiles for her benefit. 

\--

She calls Jesse every other day for a week, until he finally says, "If you're just calling to check up on me, you can stop. Don't feel like you have to."

"I'm worried about you," she says.

"Yeah, well... I've been doing worrying shit for years and I'm still here, so." Then he sighs. "I've been thinking about what you said, about... you know, talking to someone?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah... and, um... do you think if I found some stuff out, like where to go and how much it was gonna cost... do you think..."

"Anything you need. I can wire you the money, I can send you a check. Whatever you want."

"Thank you. I just... it feels like charity, I feel shitty taking your money."

"Don't. Don't _ever_ ," Skyler says forcefully.

After that, she calls him regularly every other week. Sometimes, in between, Jesse calls her just to check up on her, and sometimes he calls late at night when he can't sleep. She e-mails him when a question comes up in her work, so that he can get to answering it when he feels able to talk about it. 

She sends him a check every month, and when Jesse tells her that his therapist has referred him to a trauma specialist in Anchorage, she doubles the amount.

\--

She researches, using what Jesse told her to chase up more information. She reads up on Jane Margolis and the Wayfarer 515 crash, Andrea Cantillo and her brother Tomas, and can't find a thing about stolen methylamine around the time Drew Sharp disappeared. 

"Well," she murmurs in the direction of the wooden box with Walt's ashes that now resides on her desk. "You got away with that one."

None of it is relevant to the way the book is turning out. But still, she wants to know. 

She asks to look at the crime scene photos she hadn't wanted to see, the layers of bullet holes in the wall of Jack Welker's clubhouse, the broken angle of Todd Alquist's neck, the unfamiliar Caddy with an empty M60 and a band of fire across its side. There are some of Walt on the floor of the lab, and she forces herself to stare at them. She sets one up side by side with a photograph of the cell where Jesse was kept, and makes herself look until she can't stand it anymore.

She locks the door to her office and walks away, and days go by before she can bring herself go back in.

\--

Flynn drops out of college and lies to her about it for almost two months.

"I'm just taking a semester off. It didn't seem like a big deal," he says when he finally calls to tell her, but they both know that, for now at least, it's bullshit. 

If Walt had just died of cancer as a humble chemistry teacher, maybe she could play the 'Your father would be so disappointed' card and get him to at least think about going back to school. As it is now, though, doing things that would disappoint his father seems to have become his purpose in life. And after what she's done, Skyler feels like she doesn't exactly have any grounds for being disappointed or getting on his case about honesty.

"Are you going to do something? Get a job? You can't just mope around the house all day."

"Why? 'Cause moping around the house all day is your job?"

"I know you're not happy about the book, but it's work – "

"You're making money off what he did! You wouldn't talk about it when it counted and now you're talking and making _money_ off it!"

"So I don't have to take what Gretchen and Elliott gave you and your sister. I'm trying to provide for you _myself_."

"Yeah. That's what Dad said too, remember? Doesn't make it right."

"Flynn. That's enough." 

"I just – I just don't think it's good for you, Mom."

She takes a deep breath. "Did Marie tell you to say that to me?"

"No. But she's worried too. She – she said you've been talking to Jesse Pinkman."

Skyler silently curses her sister. "Oh, she did, huh?"

"I thought he was dead? Why would you want to talk to him?"

"He's a good person. Your Dad hurt him as much as he hurt any of us, Flynn. He's helped me a lot. And... maybe... maybe talking to him might help you too."

Flynn laughs mirthlessly. "You're fucking kidding me, right?"

He hangs up, and Skyler is left with a dead line.

It's how most conversations with her son end these days.

\--

The version of the book that she submits ends up being more like a collection of personal essays rather than a straightforward memoir. It lets her leave things out, things she shouldn't know, but in a way that doesn't make it glaringly obvious how much is missing. 

Marie flips through it and pulls a face. "So, you're still basically writing short stories? You did all that work researching and you can't make a single coherent story out of it?"

Skyler yanks the stack of pages back from her. "Jesus, why did I even ask you to read it? You've been against me doing this from the start."

"I still don't understand how you could voluntarily go wading into all the evil, psychotic _shit_ that Walt did. Not just wading in it, but... but _swimming_ in it, Skyler. You've made it your whole life. Not wanting to forget about it and move on, it seems sick to me. I mean, who are you? You think you're a detective? You're not. You haven't said anything that does any good. You're way too late for that." 

"I needed to do this for me," Skyler says slowly, taking measured breaths, trying not to scream in frustration. "Jesse got to make his confession to Hank. Even Walt said something honest to me before he died. I never did that. I needed to do this before I could move on. I needed to be... accountable. In some way. I had to process everything, and this is the only way I knew how."

Marie stares her down, and Skyler refuses to look away. 

"Has it worked?" she asks sarcastically. "Are you all better now?"

"No," Skyler answers. "But I had to try."

Marie nods and wipes her kitchen counter with her palm, gathering nonexistent dust. "What you wrote about Hank, though... that was... it's good. It's really good."

Skyler softens, and smiles at Marie, until she looks up and meets her eyes again.

"Thank you," Skyler whispers.

\--

Skyler calls Flynn and tells him some of what is going to be in the book, some of the things that are going to come out about her and Walt. Not just Walt's crimes, and hers, but the personal things. Ted. How she had taken responsibility for laundering the money. How she walked into the pool to get the kids out of the house.

She sends him the chapter about their efforts to keep him in the dark, and how she and Marie finally told him everything when they thought Hank had arrested Walt.

"If there's anything you're not comfortable with me saying about you, I want you to tell me, and I'll take it out. And if you want to read the rest of it to be prepared for what people might be talking about, you're more than welcome to."

"Thanks. I'm not – I don't think I'm ready to, yet. I'll read the one about me, I guess, but..."

"Remember, you don't have to answer the questions that anyone wants to ask you about this. It might get like things were after Hank died, and after your Dad died. It's going to be rough for a while, but people will get tired of it eventually, and they'll move on again. But if you do want to go on TV and talk about this, even to tell them how much you hate the idea of me writing it, that's okay with me. It's your decision."

"No, Mom. I'm not – I'm not gonna do that. Enough bullshit has happened to this family. Holly's old enough to kinda know what's going on now. She doesn't need to see her brother on TV calling her Mom an asshole. It's bad enough that her Dad's dead and he actually was an asshole."

Skyler bites her lip. "Thank you, baby. That's... you're a good kid." Her voice breaks, and she tries to laugh. "You can call me an asshole to my face, if that would make you feel better."

"No," Flynn says. "I don't think you're an asshole. I don't get why you've done this, but, I love you, Mom."

"I love you, too," she answers through her tears.

"Maybe next time I see you, I'll call you it, though. It's not really the same over the phone."

Skyler can't help but laugh. "Uncle Hank would be proud of you."

\--

She e-mails a copy to Jesse, with almost the same instructions she gave Flynn.

_Tell me anything I got wrong, or anything I've gone into too much detail about. If there's anything you think your name is too closely attached to, I'll take it out. I don't want you to get hurt by this._

Jesse calls her the next day.

" _Blue Sky_? Seriously?" he says without saying hello. "That's the cheesiest fucking title you could've had."

"I know. It wasn't my idea."

"What happened to calling it _Skysenberg_? That shit was funny."

"If I remember correctly, you thought it was funny. I did not."

Jesse laughs. "Oh, yeah. Right. Still. It was better. Even _My Husband Was a Total Dick and I'm Really Sorry About That_ would've been better."

Skyler rolls her eyes and bites back a smile. "Did you read the damn thing?"

"Yeah, I'm most of the way through. There's not anything I'd say you should change or take out. Except, um... I saw you had my name in the acknowledgements?"

"How could I not? And it just says Michael, so I don't think that would give you away at all."

"Can you take it out? I mean, I know you, like, acknowledge me, or whatever. Just... I don't want people asking too many questions, you know? This is gonna make people start thinking about it again, and the 'hey, what ever happened to Jesse Pinkman?' question is gonna come up no matter how much you leave me out of it, so... the less anyone has to go on, the better."

"Okay. I can take it out. Just as long as you know how thankful I am – "

"I know, Skyler. Believe me. I know." 

This time she lets herself smile. "How have you been?"

"Okay. Doing okay. I still talk in super vague terms in therapy, and I don't know if that's ever gonna work if I can't actually talk about it for real. But... I mean, for now it's helping, I think. My shrink is cool with it. He isn't super pushy, so we get on okay."

"Was that a dig at me?"

"Not at all... Nah, alright, maybe a little." He laughs. "Are you doing okay?"

"My family might not actually hate me as much as they appear to most of the time. And I consider myself lucky for that. So, yeah. I think I'm doing okay for now."

"Good. That's really good," Jesse says, and then hesitates in a way that Skyler has come to know means there's something he's been planning on saying, but is pretending to have just thought of it. "Hey, so, did you ever do anything with his... with Walt's ashes?"

"No. The ashes are still in the box, and the box is on the desk in my office. Why?"

"I've been thinking. If you still want me to come to Albuquerque and scatter them with you, I'll... I can do it. I think I can do it."

"Oh, Jesse. That would be... I would appreciate that. But if it's too difficult for you – "

"No. I want to. I'm starting to think I have to. And, you know... I wouldn't mind seeing you again."

"If we're going to do it, we should do it within the next few months. Before the book is released. Like you said, it's going to make people start asking questions again."

"Just tell me when, and I'll be there."

"How about next week? Maybe you could come down on Friday? You can stay as long as you want," Skyler blurts out without thinking.

Jesse is quiet for a long beat. "Aright," he says. "That sounds good."

"It's okay to change your mind," she adds.

"I won't."

When Skyler hangs up the phone, she stares across her desk at the box until the sunlight fades away and she has to get up to switch on the light.


	9. Chapter 9

Jesse asks her to wait for him in the Sunport parking lot, afraid someone might recognize her and then figure out who he is if they're seen together. 

Skyler almost doesn't recognize him herself as he approaches her car. She can only tell it's him by the shape of his body and the way he walks stiffly, with his hands clenched into fists by his sides.

His hair is still longish, but she can tell it's been recently cut. He's also dyed it a dark brown, and covered it with a baseball cap. His beard is neatly trimmed and also darker, the rest of his face obscured by sunglasses. Even after being dropped back into the late-summer desert heat, he's wearing a long-sleeved button down with the cuffs over his hands, trying to cover his tattoo.

He looks anything but inconspicuous.

Skyler pops the trunk and helps him store his bag. "Are you alright?" she asks.

"Trying not to freak out right now," he breathes.

Once he's in the car, he loses the cap and the glasses and hugs her across the gearshift. She can feel him shaking. "This is fucked up," he whispers.

"I'm really glad you're here." She rubs his back, and he takes a deep breath. "Come on. I'll take you home." Skyler gives him one last squeeze and then pulls away to switch on the ignition.

From the corner of her eye, she sees him pull a little blister pack of pills from his pocket. He dry swallows one with a wince, and then notices her looking.

"It's prescribed," he says. "My shrink gave it to me. It calms me down. I only need to take it sometimes."

"I didn't say anything".

"Yeah, but you were _thinking_ it."

"Honestly, I wasn't."

"It's not like I can smoke weed while I'm here. You think I'm dumb enough to risk getting caught with drugs in New Mexico? Yeah, right."

" _Jesse_ ," she says sharply. "I understand. I'm happy to see evidence of you getting help. It's something new, and I noticed it. That's all."

He groans and rubs his eyes. "Sorry. Sorry. Fuck, I'm just... I'm edgy."

"It's okay," Skyler says softly as they pull out of the airport.

As they drive to Skyler's house, Jesse seems to sink lower and lower in his seat.

"Everything looks the same," he says. "It feels like it should be way, way different."

Skyler wonders if maybe she should take him past the vacant lot that used to be her and Walt's home; if she should show him where Jack's compound had been demolished, Jesse's pit filled in and paved over; if he should see that in an effort to shed Albuquerque's residual Heisenberg meth grime, the Crossroads Motel is now condemned and boarded up.

Seeing that the city is just as scarred probably wouldn't give him any hope, though.

Skyler reaches over and squeezes his hand. "You're doing really well," she says, and steps on the gas a little harder.

\--

Skyler starts to call him Michael, just in case Holly lets something slip to Marie about the man staying at their house. Let Marie wonder if Skyler is seeing someone. Just as long as she doesn't think Jesse Pinkman came back to Albuquerque.

She's a little concerned about how things will go with Jesse and her daughter. Holly is often wary of strangers, and it can take her a long time to warm up to somebody new. But she needn't have worried. After dinner, she comes in to the living room to find Jesse sitting cross-legged on the floor, Holly across from him, a coloring book between them.

She stands back for a moment.

"I saw a bear in my backyard a couple weeks ago," Jesse says.

"No, you didn't."

"I did! There are so many bears where I live."

"Was it a scary bear?"

"Kind of. I think he was just hungry. He went through my trash and stole all my leftover pizza."

"Bears don't eat pizza."

"Bears at my house do. It's all I've got to give 'em."

Holly giggles and Jesse smiles and picks up a red crayon, taking the other half of the page. Skyler is transfixed.

"Do you know I used to know your Dad?" Jesse asks, and Skyler freezes.

"Really?"

"Uh-huh. A long time ago. He was my teacher. He taught me everything I know about chemistry."

"Mom says Dad was really smart."

"He was. He was so smart. I saw him build a robot once that saved the day."

Holly giggles again. 

Skyler puts her hand to her mouth and tries in vain to swallow a sob, photographs of the M60 rig and the burning trunk of a Cadillac flashing in her mind. Chains and a discarded pistol on a dirty floor.

Holly hears and looks up at her. "Mom, did Dad build robots?"

"Sometimes," Skyler says through a watery smile.

Jesse whirls quickly, turning almost as red as the crayon he's holding, the scars on his face standing out bright against his flushed skin. "Hey. I, uh – I didn't know you were there."

"Sorry," she whispers, and kneels down beside Holly. "Are you having fun with Michael?"

"Uh-huh. He draws good pictures."

"He does, doesn't he?" She kisses her daughter on the top of her head. "Bedtime, baby girl. Go brush your teeth and put your PJ's on and I'll be there in a minute to tuck you in."

"Okay. G'night Michael."

"'Night, kiddo."

Holly makes her way up the stairs and Jesse's smile crumbles. He buries his face in his hands.

"Shit, I am so sorry, that just kind of... it just slipped out." He groans. "Hell, it could be worse. I coulda told her her Dad missed seeing her born 'cause I was too zapped on heroin to help him sell almost forty pounds of meth."

Skyler falters for a second. There are still moments where Jesse shocks her, where reminders of who he once was collide with her image of the man she's come to know. She quickly shakes it off and rubs his shoulder. "It's okay. I try to talk to her about Walt, tell her some things, and then when she's older... she can know the rest of it. But... I'm just worried that maybe she'll say something to Marie about you. And if she tells Marie that you knew her father, then... Marie might make the connection."

"But, like... Marie knows I'm alive, right? And that you've been talking to me?"

"Yeah," Skyler says dryly. "She knows."

"And she kept that a secret, right? I mean, I haven't had cops come looking for me or anything."

"Right. But, it's not that, it's just... there'll be a lot of questions."

"As long as she doesn't tell anyone else, it'll be fine." Jesse starts picking up crayons and packing away loose construction paper. "Actually, maybe I should see her. Say hello, you know? Say... say I'm sorry about Hank and everything."

Skyler shrugs. "I suppose. I think she might appreciate it. If that's something you feel you want to do."

"Might as well, while I'm here."

"Is there... anyone else you want to catch up with?"

Jesse bites his lip and sits back down. "No. No, that's not... it's not a good idea. My, uh... I talked to my Mom about a month ago, and she... she told me that they want to get me declared legally dead. She thinks it's the best thing to do, to, you know... try to clear my name in some way. I don't know what good that'll do, but my folks want it, and I feel like I owe them that after all the shit I put them through, so... the less people that can possibly see me and recognize me around here, the better."

"Is that what you want?" Skyler asks.

"Yeah. I guess. I don't think it'll make much difference, but..." he trails off and shrugs. "Anyway... you better go put Holly to bed."

Skyler cups his chin in her hand, running her thumb over the prickles of his beard. "I'm really glad you're here," she says.

Jesse smiles, and ducks his head, and Skyler thinks he might be blushing again.

\--

He lies on his stomach beside her, eyes closed but still awake. Skyler maps the scars on his shoulders with the tips of her fingers, and he doesn't flinch.

"So," she asks. "Do you know where we're going tomorrow?"

He turns his head towards her. "Is your car good? Like, you've got enough gas, the battery is good, it's not going to just crap out for no reason?"

"I might need to stop for gas, but other than that, everything runs."

"And have you got water to take? Like, a lot of water?"

"We can get some bottled water when we stop for gas."

"Yeah," he murmurs, his eyes drifting closed again. "I know where we're going. But the bigger question..."

"Mmm?"

"Do you know where you're going now the book's done?"

Skyler rests her palm flat on his back. "Actually," she begins haltingly, "I've been thinking about maybe going to Europe for a while. Back when Walt had retired, before Hank found out, it was something we'd been talking about, and... I feel like it's something I need to do for myself. And if I'm going to leave here, why not go all out and live in Paris for six months? Flynn has talked about travelling, too. He wants to travel before he tries college again. It'd be nice to take some time to reconnect with him without everything else around here to contend with. He's been talking about travelling with one of his friends from high school. So I might end up not seeing him at all while we're gone, but..." Skyler realizes that she's rambling, and Jesse has stiffened, holding his breath. "You could visit, maybe," she adds.

He exhales a laugh. "Paris. Wow, that's... that's... far."

"They have phones in Paris. E-mail, too. I'm not going to leave you behind, Jesse."

"I know, it's not that, just..." he trails off and rubs his eyes. "Sorry. I'm wiped. The flight and... everything else really took it out of me."

"Sure." Skyler puts her arm around him and edges closer. She kisses the back of his neck. "Sleep well. You're safe."

"I love hearing you say that in person," he whispers.

She likes saying it in person, too.

\--

The next morning, they pull into Marie's driveway and Jesse hesitates.

Skyler glances at him, then to Holly in the back seat. She speaks calmly. "Do you still want to do this, Michael?"

Jesse nods quickly. "Yeah. Yeah, I can do this."

He looks around warily as he slowly climbs out of the car, as though Marie's neighbors have been waiting for years, poised over their phones ready to dial 911 at the first sign of the infamous Jesse Pinkman

Skyler holds Holly's hand as they walk to the front door. She keeps checking to see if Jesse is still trailing behind her. She's on high alert, ready to sweep him away to safety if Marie gets too worked up.

"There's my little bug!" Marie greets Holly brightly, bending down to kiss her. She stands up and looks behind Skyler. Her lips move, but the words are trapped in her throat.

"Baby, why don't you go inside and take your stuff to your room," Skyler says, her gaze darting from Marie to Jesse and back again. "Michael and I will pick you up tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay. Bye Mommy. Bye Michael!"

Jesse gives Holly a wave and a tight smile as she disappears inside the house.

"Hey, Mrs. Schrader," he says shakily.

Marie recovers and gives him a curt nod. "Hello... Michael, is it now? This is..." Marie looks over to Skyler with a million questions written on a raised eyebrow. "Unexpected."

"Uh, yeah. I, um... I – "

"Jesse – Michael – is just helping me finish some things up with the book. He wanted to say hello to you while he was here," Skyler says quickly.

Marie doesn't appear to be buying that, but she turns back to Jesse, suddenly warmer and more welcoming. "I'm sorry, the police took your things when you were missing. The bag you left here. Your clothes, and... all that money. I would've held on to it if I thought you'd be coming back."

"Oh," he says. "Uh, that's – that's okay. I bought new clothes. And – and I have a job, where I live, so, you know... I've got my own money now. Like, honest money."

"That's good. I'm glad."

Jesse gives Skyler a desperate look, and she moves to his side.

"We've got somewhere to be, so maybe we should be going – "

Jesse cuts her off, speaking to Marie in a hurried rush. "I'm sorry about your husband. If I'd had any idea what was gonna happen, I would've done a lot of things differently. And... and I'm sorry about any trouble that me being here caused... after."

"Thank you," Marie says. "I know that you really did try to help us get Walt. And that means a lot."

Skyler takes a deep breath. She'd thought Marie had finally dropped that. "We really do have a long drive ahead of us..." she tries again.

"Right. I should go in with Holly anyway." Marie bites her lip and reaches out to touch Jesse on the shoulder. 

He stands his ground, but Skyler can feel his hand flexing into a fist at his side.

"Good luck," Marie says. "I hope you're doing something good with your life."

"Yeah," Jesse croaks. "I'm trying."

Back in the car, he doubles over and takes a few deep breaths. Skyler rubs his back.

"She fucking hates me."

"No. She's surprised to see you. She's mad at me for not telling her you were coming."

He groans. "Jesus, I couldn't stop thinking about those assholes breaking in here. What if she'd been here? Why did I give it up that easy? What if – what if they'd – " his voice breaks off into nothing.

Skyler puts her arm around him. "It's okay. She wasn't hurt. Nobody was home. You didn't know what they were going to do." She smooths his hair back. "We can put this off, if you want."

"No," he gasps. "No. I... I kind of want to get this over with." He sits up, his eyes screwed shut. "Head west on the 40. I'll try and remember the way from there." He fumbles for the blister pack of pills, his hand shaking.

"Okay." Skyler checks to see whether Marie is peeking out of her windows or not before she plants a quick kiss on Jesse's mouth. "I'm so proud of you for coming back here," she whispers.

She watches his throat move as he swallows. He opens his eyes, focuses on her. "Don't forget to stop for gas. And get water," he says.

Once they have a full tank and a crate of bottled water on the back seat, Jesse relaxes more and more with every mile they go.

\--

He directs her into a wide, empty expanse of desert, and tells her to keep driving. After a while, he looks around with a frown.

"What?" she asks, starting to worry. "Are we lost?"

"No. Not really. I just can't tell exactly where... ah, fuck it. It doesn't matter. Just pull up somewhere along here."

Skyler brakes to a stop and kills the engine. 

"Is this where you cooked?" she asks, peering through the windshield at flat, brown, beautiful nothing, all the way to the horizon.

"Yeah. One of the places. Remember I told you about that time when the RV's battery died? When... when we were out of water, and Walt was coughing up blood, and he was talking like he was about to croak? 'I deserve whatever happens,' blah blah blah."

"I remember."

"It was out here. I think. Somewhere within, like, a five mile square of around here, anyway. I thought this'd be a good place. 'Cause when we were out here, he was sorry. It's probably just cause he was going crazy from dehydration, but... it's just that... he thought he was gonna die here. And then when he built a battery to jump the RV and we were able to get out, he thought the cancer had got worse, and he was gonna die within a few weeks. I dropped him off and we didn't talk about it, really, but I promised to get his share of the money from what we'd cooked to you. And sometimes I think that maybe there's some, like, parallel universe or something where he didn't go into remission, and he did die then, and I gave you the money and then it was over, and... I used to think of things like that when Todd would make me cook, or when I was alone there. Ways that things could've been fixed. That maybe there was another version of me out there where things were okay. I'd think about what that guy's life was like." 

He laughs, and looks over at Skyler with tears in his eyes. "These are the kind of conversations you have when you and all your buddies are constantly high. Parallel universes and shit, where one thing happened instead of another. It made me feel better to think about stuff like that. But I've only really been remembering it lately. Like, as well as trying to forget the things I wanted to forget, I also forgot the stuff I used to distract me from it." He sniffles, and smiles sadly out the window. "So, yeah, point is... I just thought this'd be a good place to leave him."

"It's perfect," Skyler says.

It's somewhere Walt had been happy. It's somewhere he'd been guilty. It's as remote and desolate as everything he'd left behind. 

She leans over to the back seat and retrieves the wooden box, hearing Jesse's breath hitch as she rights herself.

"Are you ready?" she asks.

"Yeah."

They walk away from the car for a few minutes until Jesse stops. "Here. Here's good."

This spot looks unremarkable, like everywhere around them, but Skyler stops too. "Would you like to do it?"

Jesse takes a couple of steps back. "No. No, you do it."

Skyler grips the box and takes a deep breath. "Is there anything you'd like to say?"

Jesse shakes his head quickly and crosses his arms over his chest.

"Okay."

Skyler takes the plastic bag out of the box, and passes the box to Jesse. "Keep that safe for me. I'm hanging on to it."

He nods, staring wide-eyed at the bag of grit.

Skyler starts to tip it out on the ground.

"Goodbye, Walt," she says under her breath, as the wind catches the ashes and carries them away, spreading them far across the desert.

"Fuck you, Walt," Jesse adds, his voice breaking.

"Fuck you," Skyler confirms.

They stand in silence once the bag is empty, watching the dust settle. 

Jesse breaks it with a guttural howl of frustration. " _Fuck_. I didn't want to _fucking_ cry!"

Skyler takes the box from him, doesn't want him to smash it in anger, and sets it on the ground before pulling him into a hug.

"Neither did I," she says, her eyes stinging, tasting salt on her lips. "It's okay."

Jesse clings to her, and Skyler watches as the wind kicks up the dust again. 

She's often thought over the months since Alaska how Walt would've imploded had he been around to see what had happened between her and Jesse. She's thought about whether or not that's why she wanted it, whether that's why Jesse wanted it. 

She's decided it doesn't matter. Walt's dead, she and Jesse are alive, and they've grown to need each other.

Skyler closes her eyes, tears spilling over, staining Jesse's collar.

The ragged sound of their hitching breaths calms, becomes slow and regular, and they're soon as silent as the desert.

"Do you want to get out of here?" she asks once Jesse has stilled, his grip on her relented until he's holding her as much as she holds him.

He takes one last look at the place where they've left Walt, and picks up the box. "Yeah," he says with a sniff. "Let's go."

The car starts on the first try, and Jesse seems relieved. 

"Wait!" he says before she can put the car in gear.

She looks at him, startled. "What? What's wrong?"

He puts his hand over hers. "Are you okay?"

Skyler smiles, and she can't stop the corners of her mouth from wavering, turning down. "No," she says. "Are you?"

"No," Jesse says. He leans over and kisses her, and she tastes the salt on his lips.

They drive back toward Albuquerque, on empty dirt roads under an endless expanse of sky. By the time the reach the interstate, the sun is dipping toward the horizon in the rear view mirror, the clouds streaked with warm bands of pink and gold, until the blue sky fades into night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this, especially if you stuck with it through its sometimes uneven work in progress-ness. Thanks everyone who gave kudos and comments and feedback. I'm all kinds of faily at responding to comments, and please know that I so appreciate the kind words, even though I totally suck at telling you that. I've always been bad at finishing multichaptered fic, so if you were in to this and kept reading, you helped me to finish and you're awesome. You inspire awe.


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